Page:Neith Boyce--The bond.djvu/98

96 other way round. I'm surer than you are. I lived for thirty years in the world before I saw you, and never saw another woman that I wanted for more than a moment. When I saw you I knew I wanted you forever. But you didn't want me."

"I want you now, though! And I don't want anyone else to have even a thought of you—I hate to think that some women have memories of you. I don't like it that women write to you, and tell you their secrets"

She broke off suddenly and laughed.

"What an idiot I'm getting to be! You hardly know me, do you? What would my Aunt Sophy say if she could hear me? … No, I know what I said is absurd, from any reasonable point of view. And I am reasonable, you know. And so I admit that I'm glad I married an attractive man, and that it's necessary other women should be more or less interested in him, and he in them. I don't want to be a jealous idiot. I want you to be perfectly free. I like you partly because you know the world—it amuses me—your experience. I don't mind your peccadilloes one bit. …" Again she stopped for a moment.

"I know you don't," said Basil.

"Wait a bit—do you? Of course you prefer to think I don't, and I prefer to think I don't—so you bring your arguments to bear on my reason,