“How absurdly ingenue you have become all of a sudden!” he said, with soft, but scathing, irony.
And he laughed, let out a long, low, and apparently spontaneous laugh, as if he were genuinely amused.
“Really one would hardly imagine that you were the heroine of the famous divorce case which interested all London not so very long ago. When I remember the life you acknowledged you had lived, the life you were quite defiant about, I can’t help being amused by this sudden access of conventional Puritanism. You declared then that you didn’t choose to live a dull, orthodox life. One would suppose that the leopard could change his spots after all.”
While he was speaking she lifted her head and looked fixedly at him.
“It’s just that very divorce case which has made me alter my way of living,” she said. “Any one who knew anything of the world, any one but a fool, could see that.”
“Ah, but I am a fool,” he returned doggedly. “I was a fool when I ran straight, and it seems I’m a fool when I run crooked. You’ve got to make the best of me as I am. Take your choice. Go to Buyukderer if you like. If you do I shall stay on the Bosporus. Or travel if you like, and I’ll happen to be where you are. It’s quite easy. It’s done every day. But you know that as well as I do. I can’t give you points in the game of throwing dust in the eyes of the public.”
“It’s too late now to let the villa, even if I cared to. And I can’t afford to shut it up and leave it standing empty while I wander about in hotels. I shall go to Buyukderer next week.”
“All right. I’ll go back to the rooms I had last year, and we can live as we did then. Give me the key of the garden gate and I can use the pavilion as my sitting-room again. It’s all quite simple.”
A frown altered her white face. His mention of the pavilion had suddenly recalled to her exactly what she had felt for him last year. She compared it with what she felt for him now. With an impulsive movement she pulled her hand away from his.
“I shall not give you the key. I can’t have you there. I will not. People have begun to talk.”