"You would have me go mad, Marianne?"
"Why! what an idea! The phrase is decidedly romantic.—You should dispense with the blue in love as well as the exaggeration in politics."
"Marianne," Vaudrey said abruptly, "do you know that for your sake I have destroyed my home and mortally wounded my wife?"
"Well," she replied, "did I ask you to do so? I pleased you, you pleased me; that was quite enough. I desire no one's death and if you have allowed everything to be known, it is because you have acted indiscreetly or stupidly! But I who do not wish to mortally wound," she emphasized these words with a smile—"my husband, I expect him to suspect nothing, know nothing, and as you are incapable of possessing enough intelligence not to play Antony with him, let us stop here. Adieu, then, my dear Vaudrey!"
She extended her hand to him, that soft hand that imparted an electrical influence when he touched it.
"Well, what!—You are pouting?"
"I love you," he replied distractedly. "I love you, you hear, and I wish to keep you!"
"Ah! no, no! no roughness," she said with a laugh, as he, taking a seat near her, tried to draw her to him in his arms.
"To keep you, although belonging to another," whispered Vaudrey slowly.
"For whom do you take me?" said Marianne, proudly drawing herself up. "If I have a husband, I require that he be respected. A man who gives his name to a woman is clearly entitled to be dealt with truthfully!"