I'm apt to talk French when I'm
excited. We have a saying: 'The wedding present which the mistress
leaves in the basket of the bride.' That was pretty near telling,
wasn't it?"
"Yes," I said, in a low voice.
And the other, after watching me for a moment more, went on: "You
think I'm revengeful, don't you? Well, I used to reproach myself
with this, and I tried to fight it down; but the time comes when you
want people to pay for what they take from you. Let me tell you
something that I never told to anyone, that I never expected to
tell. You see me drinking and going to the devil; you hear me
talking the care-free talk of my world, but in the beginning I was
really in love with Douglas van Tuiver, and I wanted his child. I
wanted it so that it was an ache to me. And yet, what chance did I
have? I'd have been the joke of his set for ever if I'd breathed it;
I'd have been laughed out of the town. I even tried at one time to
trap him--to get his child in spite of him, but I found that the
surgeons had cut me up, and I could never have a child. So I have to
make the best of it--I have to agree with my friends that it's a
good thing, it saves me trouble! But _she_ comes along, and she has
what I wanted, and all the world thinks it wonderful and sublime.
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