She got up too. She felt that she could not say what she meant to say sitting down.
“Fritz,” she added, “you’re a fool. You may be worse. I believe you are. But one thing’s certain—you’re a fool. Even in wickedness you’re a blunderer.”
“And what are you?” he said.
“I!” she answered, coming a step nearer. “I’m not wicked.”
A sudden, strange desire came to her, a desire—as she had slangily expressed it to Robin Pierce—to “trot out” the white angel whom she had for so long ignored or even brow-beaten. Was the white angel there? Some there were who believed so. Robin Pierce, Sir Donald, perhaps others. And these few believers gave Lady Holme courage. She remembered them, she relied on them at this moment.
“I’m not wicked,” she repeated.
She looked into her husband’s face.
“Don’t you know that?”
He was silent.
“Perhaps you’d rather I was,” she continued. “Don’t men prefer it?”