'By Jove! You are cutting, you know, Delicia!' he expostulated. 'Poor Fitz-Hugh! he can't help himself falling in love with Lady Rapley—'
'Can't help himself!' echoed Delicia, with supreme scorn. 'Can he not help disgracing her? Is it not Possible to love greatly and nobly, and die with the secret kept? Is there no dignity left in manhood? Or in womanhood? Do you think, for instance, that I would permit myself to love any other man but you?'
His handsome face flushed, and his eyes kindled. He smiled a self-satisfied smile.
'Upon my life, that's splendid—the way you say that!' he exclaimed. 'But all women are not like you—'
'I know they are not,' she replied. 'Captain Fitz-Hugh's sisters, for example, are certainly not at all like me! They do well to avoid my book; they would find female cant and hypocrisy too openly exposed there to please them. But with regard to your complaint—for I regard it to be a complaint from you—you may challenge the whole world of slander-mongers, if you like, to point to one offensive expression in my writings—they will never find it.'
He rose and put his arm round her. At his touch she shuddered with a new and singular aversion. He thought the tremor one of delight.
'And so you will never permit yourself to love any other man but me?' he asked caressingly, touching the rich masses of her hair with his lips.
'Never!' she responded firmly, looking straight into his eyes. 'But do not misunderstand my meaning! It is very possible that I might cease to love you altogether—yes, it certainly might happen at any moment; but I should never, because of this, love another man. I could not so degrade myself as to parcel my affections out in various quarters, after the fashion of Lady Rapley, who has descended voluntarily, as one of our latter-day novelists observes, "to the manners and customs of the poultry yard." If I ceased to love you, then love itself for me would cease. It could never revive for anyone else; it would be dead dust and ashes! I have no faith in women who love more than once.'
Carlyon still toyed with her hair; the undefinable something he missed in her fretted and perplexed him.
'Are you aware that you look at me very strangely this morning, Delicia?' he said at last; 'Almost as if I were not the same man! And this is the first time I have ever heard you speak of the possibility of your ceasing to love me!'