"Maurice," said Hermione, leaning her long arms on the table and leaning forward to her fiancé, "you're not in literature any more than I am, you're an outsider—bless you! What d'you say to that?"
Delarey hesitated and looked modestly at Artois.
"No, no," cried Hermione, "none of that, Maurice! You may be a better judge in this than Emile is with all his knowledge of the human heart. You're the man in the street, and sometimes I'd give a hundred pounds for his opinion and not twopence for the big man's who's in the profession. Would—could a noble nature yield to such an impulse?"
"I should hardly have thought so," said Delarey.
"Nor I," said Hermione. "I simply don't believe it's possible. For a moment, yes, perhaps. But you say, Emile, that there's an actual breach between them."
"There is certainly. Have you ever made any study of jealousy in its various forms?"
"Never. I don't know what jealousy is. I can't understand it."
"Yet you must be capable of it."
"You think every one is?"
"Very few who are really alive in the spirit are not. And you, I am certain, are."