.

.
"I don't worry about him," she said.

"It's of her I'm thinking.

When she has turned him into the idiot--" "She'll adore him all the more," I interrupted.
"But when she finds out the idiot she has made ?" "No woman has ever done that since the world began," said I."The unwavering love of woman for her home-made idiot is her sole consistency." Barbara with much puckering of brow sought for argument, but found none, the proposition being incontrovertible.

She mused for a while and then, quickly, a smile replaced the frown.
"I suppose that is why I go on loving you, Hilary dear," she said sweetly.
I turned upon her, with my hand, as it were, on the floodgates of a torrent of eloquence; but with her silvery mocking laugh she vanished from the apartment.