He sprang up from his chair and came nearer to her, his face aglow with ardour. She motioned him back.
“Not yet!” she said,—and the seductive beauty of her face and form smote him as with a whip of steel—“It isn’t love at first sight, you know, like that of Romeo and Juliet! We are old lovers! And you—you are married.”
“What does that matter?” he said, defiantly. “No man considers himself bound nowadays by the matrimonial tie!”
“No?” she queried, sweetly. “I’m so glad to know that! It makes me doubly thankful that I never married you!”
He made a closer step to her side and caught both her hands in his.
“Do you still persist,” he said, “in your idea that you are the old Diana?—the woman I was engaged to?—you, a mere girl?”
She smiled most entrancingly up into the feverish eyes that searched her face.
“I still persist!” she answered—“I have always loved telling the truth, no matter how unpleasant! I am the ‘old’ Diana to whom you were engaged, and whom you heartlessly ‘threw over.’ Her, and no other!—as ‘old’ as ever in years though not in looks!”
His grasp of her tightened.
“Then in Heaven’s name have your own way, you beautiful crazed creature!” he said, passionately,—“If that is your obsession or fancy, stick to it, and come back to me!”