Persis was in too fierce a mood to continue that nonsense. She turned on Willie as a she-wolf turns on a terrier at her heels:
"Oh, Lord! Can't I escape you for a moment? Do go somewhere and smoke something. Or if the worst comes to the worst, drink something; but don't stand there making green eyes at me like an ape."
"Green eyes like an ape!" he echoed, stupidly. "Well, I'll be—" Then an unusual vigor of wrath stirred him. "Look here, Persis, I won't have you make fun of me. Everybody else laughs at me, even for winning you. They think you've made a fool of me, and they think you couldn't have married me except for my money. I don't suppose it could be love—nobody ever did love me. But whatever it was that made you marry me, you did marry me, and, by gad, you've got to remember it."
"There's no danger of my forgetting that," Persis snapped, frantic lest Forbes escape her. "Don't be odious! Don't make me hate you."
Willie grew the more fierce. "Well, I'd rather have you hate me than make a fool of me. I won't be laughed at—I won't."
Persis groaned with repugnance: "Oh, you've ceased to be a laughing matter to me, Willie."
Willie was about to reply in kind, but he gave her a long look and, seeing how beautiful she was, grew more tender. "Everything seems to have ceased to be a laughing matter to you, Persis. What has come over you? Before we were married you were always laughing—at everything, everybody. I used to love to watch you. Even when you guyed me I didn't much mind—because there was fun in it. I used to say I'd give everything I possessed just to have you about, and see the world through your eyes. But from the time we were married you quit laughing. Hang it all, I married you to cheer me up a bit. What in Heaven's name has changed you?"
Before this weakness she relented a little. "Oh, nothing has changed me. Don't worry about me. I'm just a trifle bored with life."
"I've bought you everything you asked for, haven't I?" he asked. "Gad, your dressmaker's bills were enough. But the minute a gown came home you sickened of it. You tired of the theater, of the opera, of dancing. When I took you to the Royal Ascot you yawned as the horses came down the stretch. I bought you three new automobiles, and when we came down from Dieppe to Paris at a million miles an hour the pace scared me cold, but you—you went to sleep."
"It was soothing," she smiled.