“I am not afraid,” Sofia contended.
“Naturally; you will not be before the hour of ordeal which shall prove your strength or your weakness, your confidence in yourself, or my loving fears for you.”
Sofia gave a gesture of weariness and confusion. What did it matter? If he would have it so, let him: it couldn’t affect the issue in any way, what he believed, or for his own purposes pretended to believe. Had not Karslake promised ...
She tried to recall precisely what it was that Karslake had promised, but found her memory of a sudden singularly sluggish. In fact, her mind seemed to have lost its marvellous clarity of those first moments after tasting the wine of China. Small wonder, when one remembered the emotional strain she had experienced since early evening!
“Still,” she argued, stubbornly, “I don’t see what all this has to do with Lady Randolph West’s invitation.”
“Only that to accept means to expose you to the greatest temptation one can well imagine.”
Sofia stared blankly. Her wits were working even more slowly and heavily than before. And the glare in her eyes from the luminous sphere of crystal was irritating. Almost without thinking, she lifted her glass again; when she put it down it was empty.
“The jewels of Lady Randolph West,” Victor went on to explain without her prompting, “are considered the most wonderful in England; always excepting, of course, the Crown jewels.”
“What is that to me?”
Resentment sounded in her tone. She was thinking more readily once more, thanks to that second magical draught, but was nevertheless conscious of a general failing of powers drained by her great fatigue. She wished devoutly that Victor would have done and let her go....