“What?”
“Really, Fritz, there’s no sort of continuity in your mental processes. If I were to become an ugly woman, what would you feel about me then?”
“How the deuce could you become ugly?”
“Oh, in a hundred ways. I might have smallpox and be pitted for life, or be scalded in the face as poor people’s babies often are, or have vitriol thrown over me as lots of women do in Paris, or any number of things.”
“What rot! Who’d throw vitriol over you, I should like to know?”
He lit a fresh cigarette with tender solicitude. Lady Holme began to look irritated.
“Do use your imagination!” she cried.
“Haven’t got one, thank God!” he returned philosophically.
“I insist upon your imagining me ugly. Do you hear, I insist upon it.”
She laid one soft hand on his knee and squeezed his leg with all her might.