"Please, Louis!"
"Dear, I am right. Even Constance Palliser, still physically superb, but mentally morbid—in love with what once was Wayward—with the ghost she raised in her dead girlhood, there on the edge of yesterday—"
"Louis! Louis! And you! What were you yesterday? What are you to-day?"
"What do I care what I was and am?—Dutch, British, burgher, or cavalier?—What the deuce do I care, my dear? The Malcourts are rotten; everybody knows it. Tressilvain is worse; my sister says so. As I told you, the old families are done for—all except yours—"
"I am the last of mine, Louis."
"The last and best—"
"Are you laughing?"
"No; you are the only human one I've ever heard of among your race—the sweetest, soundest, best—"
"I?... What you say is too terrible to laugh at. I—guilty in mind—unsound—contaminated—"
"Temporarily. I'm going to-night. Time and absence are the great antiseptics. When the corrupt cause disappears the effect follows. Cheer up, dear; I take the night train."