"Tell me, tell me!"
"Now what is the good of upsetting yourself like this? Come, come!"
"You're going to give that—that woman—my place! Oh! you'll be sorry. She's only selfish and mercenary. She doesn't love you, and I do. You—you don't care for that, though. Oh, how can you?"
Morris was feeling awkwardly uncomfortable. He took a flower from a vase, and put it in his buttonhole before he spoke.
"I'm perfectly aware," he confessed at length, "that in the abstract Lucinda is neither so handsome, so brilliant, nor so really delightful as you are, but still—still——" He paused. "There, I'm not worth bothering about, so dry your eyes."
By a powerful effort of self-command she managed to regain some degree of composure, and to steady her voice. Quite quietly she repeated his words, "not worth bothering about," then, after an interval, "Ah, me!"
The tender yearning tone in which this little exclamation came was fraught with significance. After another moment's thought she approached quite close to him, and rested the tips of her fingers upon his chest.
"I'm afraid you are worth bothering about, my dear," she went on, making a rather pitiful little attempt to hide her sick anxiety by pretending to smile. Then, after a somewhat protracted pause, she spoke again.
"I—I—there, why should I be ashamed to say it again, even now? I love you still—oh, so much! I'm sure I shall always love you. I can't help it. We can't arrange our feelings so that they shall always be convenient and suitable. It was never really right that we should care for one another at all, because—because of your wife, and I would never—no never—have taken her place if you had even so much as hinted that you might one day come to look upon it as something merely temporary; something that could be lightly set aside as soon as you met another woman whom you—liked a bit.
"No, don't speak, Morris! I haven't done yet. You know full well that though I loved you, oh! so dearly, I never wanted to lead any other than what I thought was a perfectly honourable life. You know you didn't win me easily, in spite of everything being in your favour. You told me that because you had made a mistake in your marriage you were lonely and unhappy, and that, though you couldn't make me really your wife, our union should be as lasting and sacred as any legal bond. It was to be your true marriage. You're not treating me fairly now, dear, you're not really. You ought to feel really more tied to me by honour and loyalty than you would do even if I were indeed your wife, and had not lost my good name for your sake. I've never been troublesome and jealous, you can't say that, and when you found you were getting—well, seriously attached to another woman, it's not a bit unreasonable of me to think you ought to have avoided seeing her again. You owed it to me to be true always—you did, indeed. You knew I was not like Mrs. Belmont, who treats these ties so lightly. Come away now, darling—come away from Paris. She can't really have won your heart yet—only your fancy, only your passing fancy, Morris. You would soon forget her. Come away with me, and we will be so happy together again, and honest and upright and without any cause to be ashamed, either of us. Do come, darling—do, do."