She stopped suddenly, as if all at once she became conscious that her companion was looking at herself instead of at the fire.
"You love a man generally," said Mrs. Sylvestre, in her tenderly modulated voice,—"at least I have thought so,—because he is the one human creature who is capable of causing you the greatest amount of suffering. I don't know of any other reason, and I have thought of it a great deal."
"It is a good reason," said Bertha,—"a good reason."
Then she laughed.
"This is just a little tragic, isn't it?" she said. "What a delightfully emotional condition we must be in to have reached tragedy in less than five minutes, and entirely without intention! I did not come to be tragic; I came to be analytical. I want you to tell me carefully how we strike you."
"We?" said Mrs. Sylvestre.
Bertha touched herself on the breast.
"We," she said,—"I, Richard, Laurence Arbuthnot, Colonel Tredennis, Senator Planefield, the two hundred men callers,—Washington, in short. How does Washington strike you, now that you have come to it again?"
"Won't you give me two weeks to reflect upon it?" said Agnes.