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332 “Certainly he loves you.”

“He has never told me so.”

“You let me believe you cared for him; you tortured me with your show of preference for him.”

“You imagined that, Jarvis. It is not true!”

“It is true!” he cried, passionately. “I came to you, eager for your love, wanting you as I had never wanted anything. You flaunted this man in my face, you shut me out, you drove me back on myself—”

“Well?”

“What did you expect me to do? Endure forever in silence?”

“What did you do? Or what do you mean to do?”

“I have come to care for a woman who understands me—”

“A woman, Jarvis?”

“The woman who wrote ‘Francesca.’ I cared first because she had put into her heroine so many things that were like you.”

“Well?” she said again.

“She has come to care for me. I wanted to tell you so long ago, when we first knew, but she begged me not to until after the play was tried out. But I can’t stand it another minute. There must be