“She has gone, then, Philip: let her go!” she said, fixing upon him her sparkling eyes. “I can forgive a woman for anything but being a fool! I am a woman, and I know--or can imagine--what it is to love. But she has thrown herself away for nothing. What you loved was something that never was in her, though you fancied otherwise. You can forget her: and you will! What is she to you?”
“I won’t forget her yet!” Philip said, lifting his face with a grim look. “I’ll find her first,” he continued, suddenly rising to his feet, and tossing back his black tangled hair, “and the man who is with her! I need occupation, and that will suit me.”
“I believe in revenge as much as anybody,” observed the beautiful Marquise, tapping her white fingers on the arm of her chair; “but what you are thinking of is vulgar. Any poor forsaken husband can run after his wife, and risk losing his life as well as her. There are finer things to do than that, Philip. Why should you pay them the compliment of hunting them down? Let them punish each other: they’ll do it soon enough, and more cruelly than you would!”
“I want the fellow’s blood,” said Philip savagely. “I won’t fight him--I’ll kill him. I don’t want finer kinds of revenge: they wouldn’t satisfy what I feel here!” As he spoke, he put his clenched hand over his heart.
“And after the killing--what? Suicide, to prevent hanging. It mustn’t be, Philip. Feel that you are well rid of her; and let her know it!”
He shook his head. “How could that be done?”
Perdita waited until his eyes encountered hers. It would be no slight feat to make a man in Philip’s condition forget his disgrace and wretchedness by dint of the sheer potency of her personal charm. But Perdita’s spirit was equal to the attempt, and she was conscious that she had never been better equipped for success. And if she did succeed so far, she might safely leave the rest to him. It was a crisis for herself as well as for him. The craving for adventure, the defiance of laws, the passion of the heart, which she had been all her life approaching, might be realized now: if not now, then not at all. Perdita had a powerful heart, full of courage for any emergency, and with capacity for trenchant emotion both of love and hate. She had been lonely and self-poised from her girlhood; she had fenced herself with the armor of an alert and penetrating mind, and had made good her defense; but, to a woman, victories like these are little better than defeat. She had fought to gain that which she would rather lose. She longed to yield; to give up her sword and shield, and taste the sweetness of submission. The laws of God and man were against her; but she perceived that it was only by disregarding these laws that she could gain her desire; and she had never been taught to love the one, or to respect the other. She had wished to conquer Philip; to bring him to her feet, as she had brought other men, and then to draw back, herself uncompromised and unhurt. But now she found that no such cold triumph would content her. She was ready to take the further step that separates the thousand prudent coquettes of the social world from the few who are daring enough to surrender. All would be lost but love: but was not that worth all?