"Are you
quite certain it is not yours and you are in love with it?"
He laughed uncomfortably. "You seem to think I'm insane--"
"No," she replied, "but you might, perhaps, be about that." Her voice
was as impersonal as an oracle's. "You would be better off without her
in your house; she might easily ruin it. No common infidelity could be
half as dangerous. How blind women are--your wife would keep that about
and yet divorce you for kissing a servant. What did you call her?"
"Cytherea."
"I don't know what that means."
He told her, and she studied him in a brief masked appraisal. "Do you
know," she went on, "that I get four hundred letters a week from men;
they are put everywhere, sometimes in my bed; and last week a man
killed himself because I wouldn't see him. You'd think that he had all
a man wanted from life; yet, in his library, with his secretary waiting
for him, he.... Why?" she demanded, questioning him with her subdued
magic.
"Have you ever cared for any of them?" he asked indirectly.
"I'm not sure," she replied, with an evident honesty; "I am trying to
make up my mind now. But I hope not, it will bring so much trouble. I
do all I can to avoid that; I really hate to hurt people. If it
happens, though, what can you do? Which is worse--to damage others or
yourself? Of course, underneath I am entirely selfish; I have to be; I
always was.
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