He puffed at his cigar for a few minutes complacently.
"You profess to hate me,"—he went on—"Again I ask, why? You tell your aunt that you want to be 'loved.' You consider love the only lasting good of life. Well, you have your desire. I love you!"
She raised her eyes,—and then suddenly laughed.
"You!" she said—"You 'love' me? It must be a very piecemeal sort of love, then, for I know at least five women to whom you have said the same thing!"
He was in nowise disconcerted.
"Only five!" he murmured lazily—"Why not ten—or twenty? The more the merrier! Women delight in bragging of conquests they have never made, as why should they not? Lying comes so naturally to them! But I do not profess to be a saint,—I daresay I have said 'I love you' to a hundred women in a certain fashion,—but not as I say it to you. When I say it to you, I mean it."
"Mean what?" she asked.
"Love."
She stopped in her walk and faced him.
"When a man loves a woman—really loves her,"—she said, "Does he persecute her? Does he compromise her in society? Does he try to scandalise her among her friends? Does he whisper her name away on a false rumour, and accuse her of running after him for his title, while all the time he knows it is he himself that is running after her money? Does he make her life a misery to her, and leave her no peace anywhere, not even in her own house? Does he spy upon her, and set others to do the same?—does he listen at doors and interrogate servants as to her movements—and does he altogether play the dastardly traitor to prove his 'love'?"