‘Doesn’t my elegant and elaborate window-dressing dazzle you? Well, never mind. It never did, did it? And I never minded. You’re the only woman I’ve never been able to deceive to whom I have remained consistently attached.’
‘Are there many you’ve been able to deceive, Julian?’
He paused.
‘There are some who have loved me,’ he said. ‘So they must have been deceived.’
‘You think if they hadn’t been they couldn’t have loved you?’
He nodded.
‘Ah, I don’t believe that. Nor do you.’ She sighed. ‘It’s a thing I never would have believed ... how one can go on loving a person one knows to be—cruel and selfish and indifferent.’
Whom did she have in mind,—she wondered as she said it. That was not Jennifer, surely: surely not Roddy?
‘Not,’ she added quickly, ‘that you’re any of those things. I can’t allow you the satisfaction of thinking so.’
‘I’m all of them,’ he said: