He faced her passion as it flamed up before him, faced it with his cold, meditative smile. "That's just what makes it such a beastly shame." "My not giving him up? How _can_ I give him up?" "I see your point. You think you're exchanging a temporary affection for a permanent one. You admit that I shall love you as long as you're nice to look at. Very well. You'll be nice to look at for some considerable time. I shall therefore love you for some considerable time. Robert Lucy will love you just as long as he believes in you. How long will that be?" She did not answer. "You don't know. Have you calculated the probable effect of gradual enlightenment on our friend's mind?" "I've calculated nothing." "No. You are not a calculating woman. I just ask you to consider this point. I am not, as you know, in the least surprised at any of your charming little aberrations. But our friend Lucy has not had many surprises in his life. He'll come to you with an infinite capacity for astonishment. It's quite uncertain how he'll take--er--anything in the nature of a surprise. And, if you ask me, I should say he'd take it hard. Are you going to risk that?" He was returning to his point even when he feigned to have lost sight of it. Tortured and panting she evaded it with pitiful subterfuges. He urged her back, pressing her tender breast against the prick of it. "I'm going to risk everything," she said. "Risk it, risk it, then. Tie yourself for life to a man you don't know; who doesn't really know you, though you think he does; who on your own showing wouldn't marry you if he did know. You see what a whopping big risk it is, for he's bound to know in the end." She sickened and wearied. "He is not bound to know. Why is he?" "Because, my dear girl, you're bound to give yourself away some day. I know you. I know the perverse little devil that is in you. When you realise what you've let yourself in for you'll break loose, suddenly--like that." He threw out his arms as if he burst bonds asunder. "You can't help yourself. You simply can't live the life. You may yearn for it, but you can't live it." "I don't want to be respectable. It isn't that." "What is it then?" "Can't you see?" He looked at her closely, as if he saw it for the first time. "Are you so awfully gone on him?" "Yes," she said. "You _won't_ tell him? It'll kill me if he knows." "You think it will, but it won't." "I shall kill myself, then." "Oh no, you won't. You only think you will. It's Lucy I'm sorry for." "And it's me you're hard on. You were always hard. You say you condone things, but you condone nothing, and you're not good yourself." "No, I'm not good myself. But there is conduct and conduct. I can condone everything but the fraud you're practising on this innocent man." He rose. "It's--well--you see, it's such a beastly shame."