He broke in, angrily: “Madam, the assumption you are making is one I see no reason for permitting.”
“Mr. van Tuiver,” said I, “I hoped that you would not take that line of argument. I perceive that I have been naive.”
“Really, madam!” he replied, with cruel intent, “you have not impressed me so!”
I continued unshaken: “In this conversation it will be necessary to assume that you are responsible for the presence of the disease.”
“In that case,” he replied, haughtily, “I can have no further part in the conversation, and I will ask you to drop it at once.”
I might have taken him at his word and waited, confident that in the end he would have to come and ask for terms. But that would have seemed childish to me, with the grave matters we had to settle. After a minute or two, I said, quietly: “Mr. van Tuiver, you wish me to believe that previous to your marriage you had always lived a chaste life?”
He was equal to the effort it cost to control himself. He sat examining me with his cold grey eyes. I suppose I must have been as new and monstrous a phenomenon to him as he was to me.
At last, seeing that he would not reply, I said, coldly: “It will help us to get forward if you will give up the idea that it is possible for you to put me off, or to escape this situation.”
“Madam,” he cried, suddenly, “come to the point! What is it that you want? Money?”
I had thought I was prepared for everything; but this was an aspect of his world which I could hardly have been expected to allow for. I stared at him and then turned from the sight of him. “And to think that Sylvia is married to such a man!” I whispered, half to myself.