You are
too interesting for a lover, really you are."
Her words were a cold shock to my emotion--my superficial emotion;
though, indeed, for that moment she seemed adorable to me. Without any
apparent relevancy, but certainly because my thoughts in self-reproach
were hovering about cabin 116 Intermediate, I said, with a biting shame,
"I do not wonder now!"
"You do not wonder at what?" she questioned; and she laid her hand kindly
on my arm.
I put the hand away a little childishly, and replied, "At men going to
the devil." But this was not what I thought.
"That does not sound complimentary to somebody. May I ask you what you
mean?" she said calmly. "I mean that Anson loved his wife, and she did
not love him; yet she held him like a slave, torturing him at the same
time."
"Does it not strike you that this is irrelevant? You are not my
husband--not my slave. But, to be less personal, Mr. Anson's wife was not
responsible for his loving her. Love, as I take it, is a voluntary thing.
It pleased him to love her--he would not have done it if it did not
please him; probably his love was an inconvenient thing domestically--if
he had no tact.
Pages:
76
77
78
79
80
81
82
83
84
85
86
87
88
89
90
91
92
93
94
95
96
97
98
99
100