“I wanted to forget--to live you out of my life; but you’ve brought it all back--the old bitterness and heartache. You didn’t know what you did to me, Dante. You spared my body; you killed everything--everything else that was best. Look at me now.” She glanced down at the exotic daring of her appearance:--the golden stocking that was revealed from ankle to knee by the narrow slash in the skirt; the splendid extravagant display of arms, throat, and breast that swelled up riotously, uninterrupted, snowy and amorous from the sheathlike dress--a flashing blade half-withdrawn from its scabbard. “I’m a devil. You made me that, you virgin man. No, don’t speak---- I thought I should have died of shame after I left you. I could have killed you. You don’t know how a woman feels when she’s wanted a man with her whole soul and body, and she knows that she’s beautiful; and he’s flung her from him when she’s offered herself, as though she were worthless. ‘He didn’t care,’ I said, ‘so nobody’ll ever care.’---- And then I met Antoine Georges, who had known my father. And I did what you’ve seen and I’ve won success. When I saw you the other night I wanted to make you suffer. I’ve often pictured how I would torture you if ever you should come back--how I’d destroy you--how I’d make you go through the same hell. And now you’ve come, and I can’t do it.---- I may change my mind presently. You’d better go while I let you.” “I’m never going.” She turned her head, scrutinizing my face stealthily from between her hands. “Don’t be a fool. What about her?” “There’s no one else. There never will be.” She gasped. “You didn’t marry her?” The strained look in her face relaxed. She laughed softly to herself; why she laughed I could not guess. It was not the laughter which follows suspense, but the laughter of one who courts danger. It was as though she parted her hair into sheaves and glanced out crying, “I am Eve, the long desired.” Reaching over to the table she picked out a cigarette. When it was alight, she snuggled down into the chair, kicking off her little gold shoes and resting her feet on the fender. She eyed me dreamily. “Then you made me suffer all that for nothing? You good men can be cruel.---- Tell me.” Briefly I told her of my useless visit to Sheba; and why I left; and why I was still unmarried. I kept nothing back in my self-scorn and desire to be honest. She slipped her feet up and down the gleaming rail as she listened, lying deep in cushions, her cigarette tilted in her mouth, her hands clasped behind her head. When I ended, she frowned at me whimsically from beneath her drawn brows. “But, you impracticable person, you might have foreseen all that. You didn’t need to cross the Atlantic to discover that a husband doesn’t let his wife be taken from him without making trouble.---- So you wouldn’t pay the price to get her! You’re a rotten reckoner, old boy, for a man who counts the cost of everything ahead.”