“I never adored you,” said Madame Merle.
“Ah, but you pretended to!”
“It’s true that you never accused me of being a comfortable fit,” Madame Merle went on.
“My wife has declined—declined to do anything of the sort,” said Osmond. “If you’re determined to make a tragedy of that, the tragedy’s hardly for her.”
“The tragedy’s for me!” Madame Merle exclaimed, rising with a long low sigh but having a glance at the same time for the contents of her mantel-shelf.
“It appears that I’m to be severely taught the disadvantages of a false position.”
“You express yourself like a sentence in a copybook. We must look for our comfort where we can find it. If my wife doesn’t like me, at least my child does. I shall look for compensations in Pansy. Fortunately I haven’t a fault to find with her.”
“Ah,” she said softly, “if I had a child—!”
Osmond waited, and then, with a little formal air, “The children of others may be a great interest!” he announced.
“You’re more like a copy-book than I. There’s something after all that holds us together.”