"Yes," he says, sardonically, "about as true. But, be that as it may, you must at least be good enough to excuse me from expressing _joy_ at his return, seeing that he fills the place which I am fool enough to covet, and which, but for him, _might_--yes, say what you please, deny it as much as you like--_would_ have been mine!" "It _never_ would!" cry I, passionately. "If you had been the last man in the world--if we had been left together on a desert island--I _never_ should have liked you, _never_! I _never_ would have seen more of you than I could help! There is _no one_ whose society I grow so soon tired of. I have said so over and over again to the boys." "Have you?" "What good reason can you give me for preferring you to him?" I ask, my voice trembling and quivering with a passionate indignation; "I am here, ready to listen to you if you can! How are you such a desirable substitute for him? Are you nobler? cleverer? handsomer? unselfisher?--if you are" (laughing bitterly), "you keep it mighty well hid." No reply: not a syllable. "It is a _lie_," I cry, with growing vehemence, "a vile, base, groundless lie, to say that I am not glad he is coming back! Barbara knows--they _all_ know how I have been _wearying_ for him all these months. I was not _in love_, as you call it, when I married him--often I have told him that--and perhaps at Dresden I missed the boys a little--he knows that too--he understands! but now--_now_--" (clasping my hands upon my heart, and looking passionately upward with streaming eyes), "I want no one--_no one_ but him! I wish for nothing better than to have _him--him only_!--and to-day, until I met _you_--till you made me loathe myself and you, and every living thing--it seemed to me as if all the world had suddenly grown bright and happy and good at the news of his coming." Still he is silent. "Even if I had not liked _him_," pursue I, finding words come quickly enough now, and speaking with indignant volubility, as, having risen, I again face him--"even if I had wanted to flirt with some one, why on earth should I have chosen _you_?" (eying him with scornful slowness, from his wide-awake to his shooting-boots), "_you_, who never even _amused_ me in the least! Often when I have been talking to you, I have yawned till the tears came into my eyes! I have been afraid that you would notice it. If I had known" (speaking with great bitterness), "I should have taken less pains with my manners." He does not answer a word. What answer _can_ he make? He still stands under the wintry tree, white to lividness; drops of cold sweat stand on his brows; and his fine nostrils dilate and contract, dilate and contract, in an agony of anger and shame.