“But Trixy was not innately bad,” Zai murmurs, deprecatingly. “She married a man she could not love, and then—she yielded to——”
“The fascinations of Mr. Conway! Joy go with her! Men are not fair judges of their own sex, but if I was a woman, I should prefer old Stubbs to a dozen Conways!”
“And so should I—now,” Zai confesses meekly. “What a pity women have not the gift of clair-voyance!”
“Thank God, they haven’t!” he says to himself, as he rises, and walking up to the mirror on the mantel, looks at himself. “I wonder what Mademoiselle Ange saw in me to make her faint? It could not have been my ugliness!” he thinks, as the glass reflects back his handsome face—a face which he knows to be handsome and irresistible to most women.
Then he turns away carelessly—for he is not a vain man—and going up to his wife kisses her on her forehead.
But Zai is not satisfied with this.
“Won’t you kiss me properly, darling?” she says, holding up her fresh, red lips.
And her darling kisses her “properly,” though all the while he is wronging her in his heart, on the principle that sins of omission are as bad as sins of commission!
