“Yes, I would!” and she smiled strangely. “I think women are all made in much the same mould, whether English or Assyrian! There is nothing they resent so deeply as treachery in love.”
“Yet they are treacherous themselves pretty often!” said the Professor.
“When they are they are not real women,” declared Diana. “They are pussy-cats,—toys! A true woman loves once and loves always!”
He looked at her askance.
“I think you have been bitten, my dear lady!” he said. “Your eloquence is the result of sad experience!”
“You are right!” she answered, quietly, still holding the “Eye of Rajuna” and dangling it against the light. “Perfectly so! I have been ‘bitten’ as you put it—but—it is long ago.”
“Yet you cherish the idea of vengeance?”
She laughed a little.
“I don’t know! I cannot say! But when one has had life spoilt for one all undeservedly, one may wish to see the spoiler morally ‘hung, drawn and quartered’ in a sort of good old Tudor way! Yet my story is quite a common one,—I was engaged to a man who threw me over after I had waited for him seven years—lots of women could tell the same tale, I dare say!—he’s married, and has a very fat wife and five hideous children——”
“And are you not sufficiently avenged?” exclaimed Chauvet, melodramatically, with uplifted hands. “A fat wife and five hideous children! Surely far worse than the Eye of Rajuna!”