“But that’s different, Donald,” she observed seriously.
“How?”
“Why, you treated me so strangely that, inevitably, I didn’t know what you were like; and though you interested me very much, and though your journal brought back my old love for you, still, what I did was more in pity and admiration and reparation than—and so I could fall deeper in love. While you, being so much in love already, and with such a totally different woman”—
“Only went from bad to worse,” I groaned. “Yes, I own up. My sin is one of the lowest man can commit. I have fallen in love with a married woman. And the strange thing about it is that you are not jealous of her! Indeed, I really believe that you are magnanimous enough to love her too, though it’s natural you should not like her as much as you do some others. But next August I’ll leave her and go to India to study for my new book.”
“The married woman will go too,” she predicted calmly.
“I shouldn’t dare risk her among those hill tribes.”
“And she won’t risk you where it isn’t safe for her to go.”
“I was only thinking of your lovely complexion,” I explained.
“Old mahogany is very fashionable,” she laughed.
“Can nothing make you stay at home?” I asked beseechingly.