Page:Frank Owen - Woman Without Love (1949 reprint).djvu/71

 "I was simply thinking how droll life is," she mused. "You married her and can't live with her. Whereas you live with me and can't marry me."

"It is odd," he admitted.

"Cheer up," said she. "Perhaps some day your wife will die and you'll get even."

"At that," he reflected. "I'd rather miss her. It is so seldom one finds a perfect enemy."

"I have never found it hard," she said cynically. "I've had an almost endless procession of lovers and among them were many it would have been quite easy for me to hate. A few attained to that position. But there was not one among them that I could love, not one who had the material out of which I could make a friend. The only man I ever knew who aroused my interest was the only man among them who was not my lover. He is dead but I shall never forget him. Yet memory is not of my choosing. Some of his thoughts are strangely disturbing. It was to forget him that I annexed you."

"And eventually what will you do to forget me?" he asked drily.

"Absolutely nothing," she replied. "It won't be necessary for up to now you have never mattered. Sometimes I have to pause and try to recall who you are when you walk into the room. As far as you are concerned my mind is a mirror. Your image is reflected in it when you are about but when you walk away the reflection vanishes."

"That," said he, "is a knock-out. I'm taking the count. You have completely destroyed my conceit. But I am not wholly desolated because you still dwell in my flat."

"That is very little," she declared.

"A little of your love," he said, "means more to me than all the love any other woman has to offer."

"At least you are dependable," she told him. "You are true to me, too true. Sometimes I think I'd be happier if I had to fight for you."

Louella's life in Chicago was one round of pleasure, theatres, parties, dances, dinners at the best hotels, occasional trips to