"You're a silly child!" he said—"Are you going to listen to me or not?"
She gazed at him with an almost awful directness.
"I am listening!" she answered.
"Well, don't be melodramatic while you listen!" he retorted—"Be normal!"
She was silent, still gazing fixedly at him.
He turned his eyes away, and taking up one of his brushes, dipped it in colour and made a great pretence of working in a bit of sky on his canvas.
"You see, dear child," he resumed, with an unctuous air of patient kindness—"your ideas of love and mine are totally different. You want to live in a paradise of romance and tenderness—I want nothing of the sort. Of course, with a sweet caressable creature like you it's very pleasant to indulge in a little folly for a time,—and we've had quite four months of the 'divine rapture' as the poets call it,—four months is a long time for any rapture to last! You have—yes!—you have amused me!—and I've made you happy—given you something to think about besides scribbling and publishing—yes—I'm sure I have made you happy—and,—what is much more to my credit—I have taken care of you and left you unharmed. Think of that! Day after day I have had you here entirely in my power!—and yet—and yet"—here he turned his cold blue eyes upon her with an under-gleam of mockery in their steely light—"you are still—Innocent!"
She did not move—she scarcely seemed to breathe.
"That is why I told you it would be a good thing for you if you accepted Lord Blythe's offer,—in his great position he would be able to marry you well to some rich fellow with a title"—he went on, easily. "Now I am not a marrying man. Domestic bliss would not suit me. I have sometimes thought it would hardly suit YOU!"
She stirred slightly, as though some invisible creature had touched her, and held up one little trembling hand.