“Not very much.”

“That’s an imbecile thing to say!”

“Is it?” She turned to the mirror and touched her powdered hair lightly with both hands, and continued speaking with her back turned toward him: 

“I married you for love.  Remember that.  There was even something of it alive in the roots, I think, until within a few days—­in spite of what you are, what you have done to me.  Now the thing is dead.  I can tell you when it died, if you like.”

And as he said nothing: 

“It died when I came in late one evening, and, passing my corridor and a certain locked door, I heard a young girl sobbing.  Then it died.”

She turned on him, contemptuously indifferent, and surveyed him at her leisure: 

“Your conduct to me has been such as to deliberately incite me to evil.  Your attitude has been a constant occult force, driving me toward it.  By the life you have led, and compelled me to lead, you have virtually set a premium upon my infidelity.  What you may have done, I don’t know; what you have done, even recently, I am not sure of.  But I know this:  you took my life and made a parody of it.  I never lived; I have been tempted to.  If the opportunity comes, I will.”

Dysart rose, his face red and distorted: 

“I thought young Mallett had taught you to live pretty rapidly!” he said.

“No,” she replied, “you only thought other people thought so.  That is why you resented it.  Your jealousy is of that sort—­you don’t care what I am, but you do care what the world thinks I am.  And that is all there ever was to you—­all there ever will be:  desperate devotion to your wretched little social status, which includes sufficient money and a chaste wife to make it secure.”

She laughed; fastened a gardenia in her hair: 

“I don’t know about your money, and I don’t care.  As for your wife, she will remain chaste as long as it suits her, and not one fraction of a second longer.”

“Are you crazy?” he demanded.

“Why, it does seem crazy to you, I suppose—­that a woman should have no regard for the sacredness of your social status.  I have no regard for it.  As for your honour”—­she laughed unpleasantly—­“I’ve never had it to guard, Jack.  And I’ll be responsible for my own, and the tarnishing of it.  I think that is all I have to say.”

She walked leisurely toward the door, passing him with a civil nod of dismissal, and left him standing there in his flower-embroidered court-dress, the electric light shining full on the thin gray hair at his temples.

In the corridor she met Naida, charming in her blossom-embroidered panniers; and she took both her hands and kissed her, saying: 

“Perhaps you won’t care to have me caress you some day, so I’ll take this opportunity, dear.  Where is your brother?”

“Duane is dressing,” she said.  “What did you mean by my not wishing to kiss you some day?”