It's very black on the Atlantic for one pair of eyes
to-night."
"And the worst of it is," she said, "that my vanity is flattered and I'm
not really sorry for him."
"Rather proud of her conquest, is she?"
"Yes, it pleased me to have him care."
"She likes to think that he'll carry his broken heart to the grave, does
she?"
"Yes. Isn't it shameful?"
"Shameful? Shameless. I have always held that even the best woman dearly
loves to ruin a man. It's such a triumph. And the more she loves him, the
more she'd like to ruin him--that is, if ruin came solely through love for
her and didn't involve her."
"But I would not want to ruin you."
"If that seemed to be the supreme test of my love for you--are you sure?
I'm not. There's Thomas, knocking to announce dinner."
The Shenstone incident was apparently closed. Marian, a most attractive
woman of thirty, absorbed in a social life that demanded all her physical
and mental energy as well as all of her time, did not long vividly remember
him. But he had given her a standard by which she unconsciously measured
her husband. She contrasted the life he had promised her, the life
Shenstone reminded her of, with the life that was--so material, so
suspiciously physical when it professed to be loving, so suspiciously chill
when it professed to be friendly.
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