“Ridiculously! I like that! Do you stick out that Carey didn’t love you?” “Half London loves me. I’m one of the most attractive women in it. That’s why you married me, blessed boy.” “Carey’s a violent ass. Red-headed men always are. There’s a chap at White’s--” “I know, I know. You told me about him when you forbade poor Mr. Carey the house. But Robin’s hair is black and he’s the gentlest creature in diplomacy.” “I wouldn’t trust him a yard.” “Believe me, he doesn’t wish you to. He’s far too clever to desire the impossible.” “Then he can stop desirin’ you.” “Don’t be insulting, Fritz. Remember that by birth you are a gentleman.” Lord Holme bit through his cigarette. “Sometimes I wish you were an ugly woman,” he muttered. “And if I were?” She leaned forward quite eagerly on the sofa and her whimsical, spoilt-child manner dropped away from her. “You ain’t.” “Don’t be silly. I know I’m not, of course. But if I were to become one?” “What?” “Really, Fritz, there’s no sort of continuity in your mental processes. If I were to become an ugly woman, what would you feel about me then?” “How the deuce could you become ugly?” “Oh, in a hundred ways. I might have smallpox and be pitted for life, or be scalded in the face as poor people’s babies often are, or have vitriol thrown over me as lots of women do in Paris, or any number of things.” “What rot! Who’d throw vitriol over you, I should like to know?” He lit a fresh cigarette with tender solicitude. Lady Holme began to look irritated. “Do use your imagination!” she cried. “Haven’t got one, thank God!” he returned philosophically. “I insist upon your imagining me ugly. Do you hear, I insist upon it.” She laid one soft hand on his knee and squeezed his leg with all her might. “Now you’re to imagine me ugly and just the same as I am now.” “You wouldn’t be the same.” “Yes, I should. I should be the same woman, with the same heart and feelings and desires and things as I have now. Only the face would be altered.” “Well, go ahead, but don’t pinch so, old girl.” “I pinch you to make you exert your mind. Now tell me truly--truly; would you love me as you do now, would you be jealous of me, would you--” “I say, wait a bit! Don’t drive on at such a rate. How ugly are you?” “Very ugly; worse than Miss Filberte.” “Miss Filberte’s not so bad.” “Yes, she is, Fritz, you know she is. But I mean ever so much worse; with a purple complexion, perhaps, like Mrs. Armington, whose husband insisted on a judicial separation; or a broken nose, or something wrong with my mouth--” “What wrong?” “Oh, dear, anything! What _l’homme qui vir_ had--or a frightful scar across my cheek. Could you love me as you do now? I should be the same woman, remember.” “Then it’d be all the same to me, I s’pose. Let’s turn in.”