“You are sorry? How good of you! How paternal!”
“If your husband were here—”
“If my husband were here, you would probably be his best friend,” she rejoined, with acid sweetness; “and I should still have to take care of myself.”
Had he no sense of what was possible to leave unsaid to a woman? She was very angry, though she was also a little sorry for him; for perhaps in the long run he would be in the right. But he must pay for his present stupidity.
“You wrong me,” he answered, with a quick burst of feeling. “You are most unfair. You punish me because I do my public duty; and because I would do anything in the world for you, you punish me the more. Have you forgotten two years ago? Is it so easy to your hand, a true and constant admiration, a sincere homage, that you throw it aside like—”
“Monsieur De la Riviere,” she said, with exasperating deliberation, her eyes having a dangerous light, “your ten minutes is more than up. And it has been quite ten minutes too long.”
“If I were a filibuster”—he answered bitterly and suggestively.
She interrupted him, saying, with a purring softness: “If you had only courage enough—”
He waved his hand angrily. “If I had, I should hope you would prove a better friend to me than you are to this man.”
“Ah, in what way do I fail towards ‘this man’?”