'No. Well, you were quoting from Shakespeare—let me quote too. "Had I three ears I'd hear thee."' She drew herself back into her sofa. They were seated on the sofa side by side. He was leaning forward—she had drawn back. She was waiting in a sort of dogged silence.
'Hamilton is one of the noblest creatures I ever knew. He is my very dearest friend.'
A shade came over her face, and she shrugged her shoulders.
'I mean amongst men. I was not thinking of you.'
'No,' she answered, 'I am quite sure you were not thinking of me.'
She perversely pretended to misunderstand his meaning. He hardly noticed her words. 'Please go on,' she said, 'and tell me about Mr. Hamilton.'
'He is in love with you,' the Dictator said in a soft low-voice, and as if he envied the man about whom that tale could be told.
'Oh!' she exclaimed impatiently, turning on the sofa as if in pain, 'I am sick of all this love making! Why can't a young man like one without making an idiot of himself and falling in love with one? Why can't we let each other be happy all in our own way? It is all so horribly mechanical! You meet a man two or three times, and you dance with him, and you talk with him, and perhaps you like him—perhaps you like him ever so much—and then in a moment he spoils the whole thing by throwing his ridiculous offer of marriage right in your face! Why on earth should I marry Mr. Hamilton?'
'Don't take it too lightly, dear young lady—I know Hamilton to the very depth of his nature. This is a serious thing with him—he is not like the commonplace young masher of London society; when he feels, he feels deeply—I know what has been his personal devotion to myself.'
'Then why does he not keep to that devotion? Why does he desert his post? What does he want of me? What do I want of him? I liked him chiefly because he was devoted to you—and now he turns right round and wants to be devoted to me! Tell him from me that he was much better employed with his former devotion—tell him my advice was that he should stick to it.'