Then there entered one whom I had almost forgotten—Lucretia.
My first thought was: “Thank God! my wife isn’t here!” My second: “How can I get rid of her?” It is true I have always tried to make life more like fiction, to drench it with romance, to cultivate it in purple patches. Here, then, was a dramatic situation I might have used in one of my novels; here was a sentimental scene I might develop most artistically; and now my whole panting, perspiring anxiety was not to develop it. “Confound it!” I thought, “this should never have happened. Why can’t fiction stay where it belongs?”
Lucretia was dressed with some exaggeration. Her split skirt showed a wedge of purple stocking almost to the knee. Her blouse, too, was of purple, a colour that sets my teeth on edge. She wore a mantle of prune colour, and a toque of crushed strawberry velvet with an imitation aigrette. The gilt heels of her shoes were so high that she was obliged to walk in the mincing manner of the mannequin.
She offered me a languid hand and subsided unasked on the sofa. Her lips were Cupid’s bows of vermilion, and her complexion was a work of art. She regarded me with some defiance; then she spoke in excellent French.
“Well, mon ami, I have come. You thought to leave me there in Napoli, but I have followed you. Now, what are you going to do about it?”
“Do!” I said, astounded. “Why, you have no claim on me!”
“I have no claim on you. You say that—you who have stolen my heart, you who have made me suffer. You cannot deny that you have run away from me.”
“I don’t deny it. I did run away from you; but it was to save you, to save us both. I have done you no wrong.”
“Ah! you thought so. To leave one who loved you in that way. That is like the Englishman.”
“But good heavens!” I cried, half distracted, “I thought I acted for the best.”