“Then your sigh was the outcome of another regret; not, I hope, that love—and fate—had overtaken you at last?”
“No, Geoffrey, not that. You pay us both a poor compliment.” She was speaking half dreamily, and her voice seemed to take its tone from and blend with the subdued melody of the andantino that came from the inner room. “What there may be to regret comes from others, from outside.”
“From men who have loved you?”
She made an inclination of assent.
“A man little thinks how painful, how hateful his persistence is to a woman who cannot care for him.”
“Men are most selfish in love,” Herriard said.
“Selfish and unreasonable,” she supplemented; “some, at least. They look upon a woman as a besieged town, which, refusing to surrender, must be taken by assault or battered to destruction.”
She spoke so feelingly that the indignant blood surged in Herriard’s veins. “Alexia, you have been persecuted? Tell me: you must.”
“It is needless,” she replied, “since it is all over now.”
“Ah, you mean that man, Martindale? He——”