"Victor, are you offended at what I said?"
I looked down at her with a slight smile.
"I am not so easily offended," I said, quietly.
"I will talk about all these things with you another day—not now."
"And do forgive me for siting up at nights. I know you do not like it. I know it ruins my looks, but I must work. Besides, all my excitement, all my amusement, is in it too. When I am not with you it is all I have. It is different for you, as a man, besides your work and besides myself, you have all sorts of distractions and—"
"What sort of distractions do you think I have?" I asked, quietly, and looking straight into her eyes.
Her words might mean and include a very great deal.
"Oh, how can I say! When you feel restless and unable to work at seven in the evening, say from then till seven the next morning your time is your own—balls, the Empire; there are a thousand things—all the pleasure, or at any rate the passing excitement that you can take in these ways, I crush into the excitement that there is in work—in overwork."
There was nothing in the actual words, but I felt the thoughts that underlay them, unexpressed. I resented the opinion she held of me. It was untrue, and I meant to remove it. I was silent an instant, thinking how to find words passably comprehensible and yet conventionally circumlocutory and euphemistic. After a moment I said simply—
"If you think I am leading a fast life, it is a mistake. I am not. What makes you think I have distractions, as you put it?"