Heaven knows what they earn,
but it must be little enough! Beatrice is shabby and thin and
pale. She is devoting the best years of her life to what she
imagines to be her duty."
"And how does this affect me?" Elizabeth asked, coldly.
"Only in this way," Tavernake answered. "You asked me how it was
that I could find you as beautiful as ever and adore you no
longer. The reason is because I know you to be wretchedly
selfish. I believed in you before. Everything that you did
seemed right. That was because I was a fool, because you had
filled my brain with impossible fancies, because I saw you and
everything that you did through a distorted mirror."
"Have you come here to be rude?" she asked him.
"Not in the least," he replied. "I came here to see whether I
was cured."
She began to laugh, very softly at first, but soon she threw
herself back among the cushions and laid her hand caressingly
upon his shoulder.
"Oh, you are just the same!" she cried. "Just the same dear,
truthful bundle of honesty and awkwardness and ignorance. So you
are going to be victim of Beatrice's bow and spear, after all."
"I have asked your sister to marry me," Tavernake admitted. "She
will not."
"She was very wise," Elizabeth declared, wiping the tears from
her eyes. "As an experience you are delightful. As a husband
you would be terribly impossible. Are you going to stay and take
me out to dinner this evening? I'm sure you have a dress suit
now.
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