“I used to love you in a different way, perhaps.”
“And now?”
“Perhaps in the same sort of way, Carlotta.”
“I loved my baby because it was mine,” she remarked, looking at the flames through one hand’s delicate fingers. “I wanted to do everything for him and didn’t want him to do anything for me. I would have died for him. It is so strange. Yes, I think you must love me like that, Seer Marcous. Why?”
“Because when I found you in the Embankment Gardens nearly two years ago you were about as helpless as your little baby,” I replied, somewhat disingenuously.
Carlotta gave me a quick glance.
“You thought me then what you call an infernal nuisance. Oh, I know now. I have grown wise. But you were always good. You looked good when you sat on the seat. You were reading a dirty little book.”
“L’Histoire des Uscoques,” I murmured. How far away it seemed.
There was a pause. I regarded her for a moment or two. She was sunk again in serious reflection. I sighed—at the general dismalness of life, I suppose—and resumed my Arabic.
“Seer Marcous.”