“Don’t you realize that I tried to kill you?” she asked.
“Well, what of it? You didn’t. Nor do I feel disposed to lay it up against you. No doubt I’d have done the same thing in your place. Succeeded, too. If ever I start out to kill anyone I’ll do it. No anticlimaxes for me.”
Polly gave a short laugh. “Couldn’t have thought of anything more cutting! Can feel the knife down on the bone. Perhaps you are grateful to me. You always wanted drama. You’ve hit the high spots twice in one week.”
“Melodrama,” corrected Elizabeth Pelham. “But love and melodrama seem to be synonymous terms—in real life, at all events. We do it better in fiction. First Eustace, then you. And both of you belong to the topmost stratum of civilization!”
“No one is civilized,” snapped Polly. “There’s not one of us—who’s alive—who wouldn’t kill to get what we wanted, if we dared. Well, I dared, and I’m not feeling ashamed of myself. Not a bit.” She turned to Gita. “You said out there I had no ‘right.’ I have! And you know it! He was mine and you deliberately took him from me.”
“He never was yours. Nor had he ever the least idea you cared for him, if that’s any consolation.”
“What on earth did he think? I’ve not looked at another man for months.”
“Thought you were amusing yourself with a new type. You told him you amused yourself with one man after another.”
“Probably did. Sounds like me. Nothing so blind as a man who’s in love with another woman. Were you out with him tonight? I’ve a right to ask that.”
“Well, I was.”