“No, by thunder, I’m not,” he cried, violently. “I don’t pretend to be a saint—far from it; but there’s not a lover in the world would like to remember that the girl he’s engaged to has read Maupassant.”
She looked at him for a moment with that sweet mixture of mocking tenderness which a man’s eyes can never assume; then she said to her maid, who had answered the bell,
“No, thank you; I want nothing. I rang by mistake.”
“But you are not”—she began, and checked herself. “So Otto is coming to my party to-night,” she said.
She enjoyed his responsive scowl.
“No, Otto is not coming,” he answered. “His Highness has gone off in a huff. About that hoax of Willie’s, I imagine, but his huffs are not easy to classify. Mind you, I don’t defend the trick. I think it was rather a low thing to do.”
“To Van Troyen it merely represented so much champagne,” she replied. “I like Otto; he is eminently estimable and—and worthy. He, at least, would never have told me not to read Maupassant.”
“No,” sneered Gerard, “he would never have heard of him.”
“Just so. There is nothing more delightful than a husband who is absolutely ignorant of everything. With him, at least, one runs a chance, even in this age, of unreasoning jealousy. And unreasoning jealousy must be delightful. Like mustard. What is the use of a man who keeps saying, ‘The vices are my share; the virtues are yours. And each of us has got what he ought to have’? Gerard, rather than a husband who said to me, ‘Of course, I am faithless; let us talk of something else,’ I would have a husband who said, ‘You are faithless. I am going to kill you,’ and did it.”