And on that Saturday evening, he walked into her sitting-room with a pale and composed face.
She was seated upon the sofa and arranged with every care, and was looking triumphantly beautiful as she smoked a cigarette.

Her fine eyes had in them all the mocking of the fiend as she greeted him lazily.
"How are you, John ?" she said casually--and puffed rings of smoke, curling up her red lips to do so in a manner that, John Derringham was unpleasantly aware, he would once have found attractive, but that now only filled him with disgust.
"I am well," he said, "thank you,--better for the change and the sight of some most interesting things." "And I, also," she responded with provoking glances from under her lids, "am better--for the change! I have seen--a man, since which I seem to be able the better to value your love!" And she leaned back and laughed with rasping mockery, which galled his ears--although for some strange reason she could no longer gall his soul.

He felt calm and blandly indifferent to her, like someone acting in a dream.
"I am glad you were, and are, amused," he said.

He had not made the slightest attempt to kiss her in greeting--and she had not even held out her hand.
"You are quite rich now, John, aren't you ?" after a short silence she presently asked nonchalantly--"that is, as you English count riches--ten or twelve thousand a year.

I suppose it will keep you in comfort." He leaned back and smiled one of his old cynical smiles.
"Yes," he said, "it is extremely rich for me; my personal wants are not great." "That is splendid, then," she went on, "because I shall not feel I am really depriving you of anything by doing what I intend to do in throwing you over--otherwise I should have been glad to settle something upon you for life!" As he listened, John Derringham's eyes flashed forth steel, but the pith of her speech had in it such divine portent, as it fell upon his ears, that the insult of its wording left him less roused than she hoped he would have been.
She saw that it was joy, not rage, which lay deep in his eyes, and the fury of her whole nature blazed up, so that she forgot the years of polish that she had acquired--forgot her elaborately prepared plan that for an hour she would torture and play with him, as a cat plays with a mouse, and, crimsoning with wrath, she hurled forth her displeasure, cutting things short.
"You are only a paltry fortune-hunter, John Derringham, for all your fine talk," she said loudly, raising her voice, and allowing it to regain its original broad accent, "and I have kept you on just to punish you.