Page:Neith Boyce--The bond.djvu/39

37 looked at her, and his eyes were clouded suddenly with tears.

"You! No—if you were!"

"You foolish boy, you dear creature, can't you see it? I'll prove it to you. Basil, I'm frightfully jealous."

"Jealous! Not you. How could you be—what is there to be jealous about?"

"Everything! Everybody! Every woman that comes to your studio, or that you look at in the street. Every woman you've ever known. Your past—your present—your future."

She changed colour. Her eyes, deeply blue now under straight, dark brows, looked fiercely into Basil's. But he took her emotion lightly.

"That's absurd, you're only trying to please me. You know you're the only woman in the world for me, the only one who has ever existed for me, really."

"Except some hundreds that you have been or are interested in! Except Mrs. Perry, except Alice, except—a lot that I don't know!"

"Teresa, you little charming idiot, you know perfectly well you're talking through your hat! Women don't care about me. Only two or three in my whole life have—and I haven't cared for them. They like me, they find me companionable, that's all. Alice has a purely friendly interest in me, and I in her. Mrs. Perry comes to me on business. I never see her socially"