“That woman is not, however, me. I am a beautiful girl—that, and no more—I contain nothing, I assure you, nothing that could be moulded into that woman.”
“You contain everything,” said her husband slowly, “only the deuce of the matter is, that none of us know where to find it!”
She leant forward so that her breath touched his cheek. “Humphrey, I wish you had never seen that picture! This necessity for idealization is an insult to me and to yourself—you should have had more insight from the beginning.”
“My good child,” he said laughing softly, “I thought the experiment was an avowed fact.”
She drew in her lips sharply, and was silent.
When she spoke again her voice was rather hoarse.
“I have often tried to imagine the things that go to a murder, and I really do think I understand the impulse now. I shall never altogether hate a murderer again. I am glad I know; one feels better—more liberal, for every new sensation.”
“And, after all, it was supremely silly,” she went on, “the experiment _is_ two-sided, but you have no idea how infinitely brutal the bald fact sounded.”
“Well—there is reason even in experiments, and remember, once for all, I am not a dramatic creature given to sudden new developments, I am no emporium for the creation of fresh sensations; here I am, finished and complete.”
“‘Finished and complete!’ Was ever conceit like unto hers! My good girl, you are neither.”
“Well, here I am then, unfinished and incomplete.”
“Ah, but Nature invariably finishes her work if it’s worth the tools.”
“Like Providence shapes our ends,” she sneered with modulated savageness. “Ah, this marriage truly is an experiment! Look at those two at the window—that girl and that man, that stunted creature there! Perhaps he’s an artist. She has a measly look and the man’s nose is awful! They are not a scrap like Browning’s artist and the girl, and yet, I fancy, they think themselves in love with one another—tell the man to stop for a minute!—here, here, at this house—there, do you see the idiotic simpers! Ah, yes, that’s love! And the two will marry, no doubt, on next Shrove Tuesday, but it won’t be an experiment, I don’t think either of the pair looks as if he or she went in for observing new phases.”