"Yes," I said. I found nothing else to say.
"If I had had a husband like that I would never have yawned," she went on; "and besides, Robert is too masterful and would be too jealous to let one divert one's self with another."
"Yes," I said again, and continued to smooth her forehead.
"He has sentiment, too--he is not matter-of-fact and brutal--and oh, you should see him on a horse!--he is too, too beautiful." She stretched out her arms in a movement of weariness that was pathetic and touched me.
"You have known him a long, long time?" I said, gently.
"Perhaps five years, but only casually until this season. I was busy with some one else before. I have played with so many." Then she roused herself up. "But Robert is the only one who has never made love to me. Always dear and sweet, and treating me like a queen, as if I were too high for that, and having his own way, and not caring a pin for any one's opinion. And I have wanted him to make love to me often. But now I realize it is no use. Only, you sha'n't have him, snake-girl! I told him as we were going to the opera you were as cold as ice, and were playing with Christopher, and I am going to take him down to Northumberland with me to-morrow out of your way. He shall be my devoted friend, at any rate. You would break his heart, and I shall still hold you to your promise."
I said nothing.
"Do you hear? I say: You would break his heart. He would be only capable of loving straight to the end. The kind of love any other woman would die for--but--you--You are Carmen."
At all events, not she, nor any other woman, shall ever see what I am or am not. My heart is not for them to peck at. So I said, calmly: "Carmen was stabbed!"
"And serve her right! Fascinating, fiendish demon!" Then she laughed, her mood changing.
"Did you see Charlie?" she said.
"We breakfasted together."
"Cheerful person, isn't he?"
"No," I said. "He looked cross and ill."
"Ill!" she said, with a shade of anxiety. "Oh, you only mean dyspeptic."
"Perhaps."
"Well, he always does when he comes from Paris. If you could go into his room and see the row of photographs on his mantelpiece, you might guess why."