"Give me
a little kindness, Wingrave! You make me feel and seem a perfect
idiot. Why, I'd rather you asked me anything that treated me like
this."
"I was under the impression," Wingrave remarked, "that I was behaving
rather well. I wonder what would really satisfy you!"
"To have you behave as you are doing, and want to behave differently,"
she cried. "You are magnificent--but it is because you are
indifferent. Will you kiss me, Wingrave?"
"With pleasure!" he answered.
She drew away from him quickly.
"Is it--another woman?" she asked. "The Marchioness?"
Her eagerness was almost painful. He did not answer her at once. She
caught hold of his wrist and drew him towards her. Her eyes searched
his face.
"The Marchioness," he said, "is a very beautiful woman. She does not,
however, affect the situation as between you and me."
"If she dared!" Lady Ruth murmured. "Wingrave, won't you try and be
friends with me?"
"I will try--certainly," he answered. "You would be surprised,
however, if you could realize the effect of a long period of enforced
seclusion upon a man of my--"
"Don't!" she shrieked; "stop!"
"My temperament, I was about to say," he concluded. "There was a time
when I am afraid I might have been tempted, under such circumstances
as these, to forget that you were no longer free, to forget everything
that except we were alone, and that you--are as beautiful as ever you
were!"
"Yes!" she murmured, moving imperceptibly a little nearer towards him.
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