“Because he has stolen your wife’s love?” Madam Marx, as she put the question, laid her fat hand upon Gregorio’s shoulder and laughed confidently. The movement irritated him, but he never tried to resist her now.
“No, not quite that. I’m used to it, and the money more than compensates me. But I hated the man when I first saw him in the Paradise. There was a fiddler-woman he talked to, and he could scarcely make himself understood. He had money, and he gave her champagne and flowers. And I was starving, and the woman was beautiful.”
Madam tapped his cheek and smiled.
“The woman can’t interest you now. Also you have money—his money.”
“Still I hate him.”
“You Greeks are like children. Your hatred is unreasonable; there is no cause for it.”
“Unreasonable and not to be reasoned away.”
“Well, why worry about him? He won’t follow you to Benhur, I fancy.”
“It doesn’t worry me generally; but when you mention him my hate springs up again. I forget him when I am by myself.”
“Forget him now.”