ep nearer to the couch, and looked down
on her with an expression of amused courtesy.

"Oh, I don't know. Probably nowhere. But if such a man could be found I
am certain he would turn out a very stupid person. You can't be expected
to furnish every one who approaches you with a mind. To expect that
would be too much, even from you who know how to work wonders at such
little cost to yourself."

"To myself," she repeated in a loud tone.

"Why this indignation? I am simply taking your word for it."

"Such little cost!" she exclaimed under her breath.

"I mean to your person."

"Oh, yes," she murmured, glanced down, as it were upon herself, then
added very low: "This body."

"Well, it is you," said Blunt with visibly contained irritation. "You
don't pretend it's somebody else's. It can't be. You haven't borrowed
it. . . . It fits you too well," he ended between his teeth.

"You take pleasure in tormenting yourself," she remonstrated, suddenly
placated; "and I would be sorry for you if I didn't think it's the mere
revolt of your pride. And you know you are indulging your pride at my
expense. As to the rest of it, as to my living, acting, working wonders
at a little cost. . . . it has all but killed me morally. Do you hear?
Killed."

"Oh, you are not dead yet," he muttered,

"No," she said with gentle patience. "There is still some feeling left
in me; and if it is any satisfaction to you to know it, you may be
certain that I shall be conscious of the last stab."

He remained silent for a while and then with a polite smile and a
movement of the head in my direction he warned her.

"Our audience will get bored."

"I am perfectly aware that Monsieur George is here, and that he has been
breathing a very different atmosphere from what he gets in this room.
Don't you find this room extremely confined?" she asked me.

The room was very large but it is a fact that I felt oppressed at that
moment. This mysterious quarrel between those two people, revealing
something more close in their intercourse than I had ever before
suspected, made me so profoundly unhappy that I didn't even attempt to
answer. And she continued:

"More space. More air. Give me air, air." She seized the embroidered
edges of her blue robe under her white throat and made as if to tear them
apart, to fling it open on her breast, recklessly, before our eyes. We
both remained perfectly still. Her hands dropped nervelessly by her
sid