"I dream of love!"—she repeated softly,—while he, smoking tranquilly, and looking the very image of a tailor's model in his faultlessly cut dress suit, spotless shirt front, and aggressively neat white tie, studied her face, her figure and her attitude with amused interest—"But my dream is not what the world offers me as the dream's realisation! The love that I mean—the love that I seek- -the love that I want—the love that I will have,"—and she raised her hand involuntarily with a slight gesture which almost implied a command—"or else go loveless all my days—is an honest love,— loyal, true and pure!—and strong enough to last through this life and all the lives to come!"
"If there are any!"—interpolated Roxmouth, blandly.
She looked at him,—and a vague expression of something like physical repulsion flitted across her face.
"It is no use talking to you,"—she said—"For you believe in nothing—not even in God! You are a man of your own making—you are not a man in the true sense of manhood. How can you know anything of love? You will not find it in the low haunts of Paris where you are so well known,—where your name is a byword as that of an English 'milord' who degrades his Order!"
"What do YOU know of the low haunts of Paris?" he queried with a cold laugh—"Is Louis Gigue your informant?'
"I daresay Louis Gigue knows as much of you as most men do,"—she replied, quietly—"But I never speak of you to him. Indeed, I never speak of you at all unless you are spoken of, and not always then. You do not interest me sufficiently!"
She moved towards the house. He followed her.
"Your remarks have been somewhat rambling and disjointed,"—he said- -"But essentially feminine, after all. And they merely tend to one thing—that you are still an untamed shrew!"
She looked back at him over her shoulder. Her eyes gleamed in the moonlight,—a faint smile curved her pretty mouth.
"If I am, it will need someone braver than you are to tame me!" she said—"A trickster is always a coward!"