"Don't talk to me—don't speak! She knew from every syllable I uttered that I perfectly loathed it, and I know that she tried to make it as hateful to me all the way through as she could. She played it at me, and she knew it was me. It was as if she kept saying all the time, 'How do you like my translation of your Boston girl into Alabama, or Mississippi, or Arkansas, or wherever I came from? This is the way you would have acted, if you were me!' Yes, that is the hideous part of it. Her nature has come off on the character, and I shall never see, or hear, or think, or dream Salome, after this, without having Yolande Havisham before me. She's spoiled the sweetest thing in my life. She's made me hate myself; she's made me hate you! Will you go out somewhere and get your lunch? I don't want anything myself, and just now I can't bear to look at you. Oh, you're not to blame, that I know of, if that's what you mean. Only go!"
"I can go out for lunch, certainly," said Maxwell "Perhaps you would rather I stayed out for dinner, too?"
"Don't be cruel, dearest. I am trying to control myself—"
"I shouldn't have thought it. You're not succeeding."
"No, not so well as you, if you hated this woman's Salome as much as I did. If it's always been as bad as it was to-day you've controlled yourself wonderfully well never to give me any hint of it, or prepare me for it in the least."
"How could I prepare you? You would have come to it with your own prepossessions, no matter what I said."
"Was that why you said nothing?"
"You would have hated it if she had played it with angelic perfection, because you hated her."
"Perhaps you think she really did play it with angelic perfection! Well, you needn't come back to dinner."
Louise passed into their room, to lay off her hat and sack.