“And you come back from it as merry as a young gentleman in a Hauptmann play. You are barely civil.”
“My dear Leonora!” he protested.
She looked him straight in the eye and shook her head.
“Barely civil. What have I done to you?”
“You have always shown yourself to be the sweetest of women,” said he.
“Then why not treat me as such?”
She stood near him on the narrow stair, alluring, reproachful, menacing, yet ready to be submissive. Despite her make-up, her proud beauty shone replendent. If she had been a wise woman, she would have let him answer the challenge. But a woman in love is an idiot; Heaven forbid that she should be otherwise! So is a man, for the matter of that; but he obeys an elementary instinct of self-protection. Woman essentially disobedient (cf. Rex Mundi vs. Eve) does not. Hence storms and tempests and cataclysms. Seeing him hesitate, she added jealously:
“I believe there is more attraction in the shadow-child at Southcliff than I have been led to suppose.” A man of the world, he ignored the challenge, and turned off the innuendo with a laugh.
“Who can say what is shadow and what is substance here below? Kant will tell you that nothing exists save as an idea in our minds.”
“I don't seem to exist in yours at all.”