“And my wife?”
“You are still something of a madman.”
“So you say.”
“I—indeed!”
He bent forward with a sudden eruption of passion and kissed her foot again, till she drew it away under the folds of her dress.
“Ah, you are still a little mad,” she said, turning and smiling at him with her quick eyes; “bide so, my dear lord; I can suffer it.”
“And yet—”
“I hate her! I hate her! I hate her!”
“Bah!—she cannot harm you.”
“I hate her for being a martyr, for being strong, for thinking herself a saint. Pah!—how I could scratch her proud, big face. She humiliates me because of her misery, because she is contented to suffer. It is impossible to trample such a woman underfoot.”