"Veronica doesn't know what passion is. The poor child's anæmic."
"Another mistake. Veronica, and 'children' like Veronica have more passion in one eyelash than you have in your whole body."
"It's a pity," she said, "you can't have Veronica and her eyelashes instead of me. She's young and she's pretty."
He sighed with pain as her nerves lashed into his.
"That's what it all amounts to--your wanting to get out to the Front. It's what's the matter with half the men who go there and pose as heroes. They want to get rid of the wives--and mistresses--they're tired of because the poor things aren't young or pretty any longer."
She dropped into the mourning voice that made him mad with her. "I'm old--old--old. And the War's making me older every day, and uglier. And I'm not married to you. Talk of keeping you! How can I keep you when I'm old and ugly?"
He looked at her and smiled with a hard pity. Compunction always worked in him at the sight of her haggard face, glazed and stained with crying.
"That's how--by getting older.
"I've never tired of you. You're more to me now than you were when I first knew you. It's when I see you looking old that I'm sure I love you."
She smiled, too, in her sad sexual wisdom.