Page:The Sense of the Past (London, W. Collins Sons & Co., 1917).djvu/36

 sophisticated and stupid. I don't quite see, you know, why I should be offered up on such an altar." After which, as she was still silent, though only as if because she had already said all: "Is it inconceivable," he demanded, "that I should in the course of time go for a few months without you?"

She smiled in her implacable splendour at his touching want of grasp. "Isn't the whole point that you can't possibly go for a few months? It would be a shame moreover if you did. I had quite as soon you went for a lifetime as for three days. I want you perfect, and three hours would prevent it. When I say 'I want' you," she handsomely developed, "I only mean I should want you if I had a right. My insanity, I quite understand, deprives me of all rights. But at the same time," she insisted, "you don't in the least undermine it by calling it a cold little theory. I don't pretend that it's anything else: my cold little theory is exactly indeed that it would be interesting to catch you—catch you young, as they say, since you are young—and put you through."

He followed her with his face of gloom. "For the amusement of seeing what I should be at fifty?"

"There you are"—it had made her again quick; "and see what it is to be really intelligent! Precisely for the amusement, if you prefer that word—though I should use some other: save 22