He looked at her for the first time since entering the room.
“Oh! you shouldn’t faint so soon. We must go again to Rome before it gets unbearably hot.”
“And I must follow like a good child.” She rose and stood by his side. “You are domineering, like most men. How long must I carry burdens?” She turned her heated face to him and looked as if she would say, “Why don’t you—show that you are a man? Consider me for a moment as a woman. Wouldn’t you like to love me? Do you think you could have me, the rejected Mrs. Wilbur? Try! It will give you an unexpected sensation. Come, you are pedantic, you play the schoolmaster overmuch.”
“No one could call you a child,” he smiled, sitting down below her on the window-sill.
“No, I am better than a child; I can help you make books, and when I am good-natured I amuse you and flatter you. You like flattery so much!”
Her eyes challenged him again. She was imperiously anxious to put him beside himself—and—to spurn him, perhaps.
“You have given me the keenest flattery; you have obeyed me.”
“And if I disobey, and recant?”
“Oh, you won’t do that,” he answered tranquilly. “You are too intelligent to do anything so silly.”
“Suppose I return to my husband and ask him to forgive me?”