'My dear Otho, I should only be a conspirator if I did; you would not wish that; it would upset the House of Othmar.'
'I should like whatever pleased you,' he said, weakly perhaps but sincerely.
'Even your own ruin?' she asked, amused.
'Even that, perhaps!' he answered—and thought: 'if it served to draw us more closely together.'
She guessed what remained unspoken.
'I do not think ruin would have an agreeable effect on my character,' she said, still with amusement at his romantic fancies. 'I have never at all understood why it should develop all one's virtues to have a bad cook, or why it should render one angelic to be obliged to draw on one's stockings oneself, or brush one's own hair before a cracked glass. I think it would only make me exceedingly unpleasant to everybody, yourself included.'
'Marie Antoinette——'
'Oh, poor Marie Antoinette! She adorns the moral of every lesson of earthly vicissitudes! I think the very enormity of her agony served as a stimulant. Besides, she knew she had all posterity for an audience. In great crises it ought to be easy to behave greatly. Antigone and Iphigenia are intelligible to me.'
'Because you have instincts which are great in you; only——'
'Only what? Do not pause. The one privilege of marriage which is really valuable, is the permission to say disagreeable things.'