Your question implied yet another, and it was, Do I, hating my husband, love you ?" "Geraldine!" "Do you still wish that question answered?
I will do you that favour also: Listen: for the life of me--I don't know." And the speaker laughed--a laugh full of amused tolerance, as though her confession had left her a careless spectator of its results.
Mr.Fogo shuddered.
"In heaven's name, Geraldine, don't mock me!" "But it is true.

How _should_ I know?
You have talked to me, read me your verses--and, indeed, I think them very beautiful.

You have with comparative propriety, because in verse, invited me to fly with thee to a desolate isle in the Southern Sea--wherever that is--and forgetting my shame and likewise blame, while you do the same with name and fame and its laurel-leaf, go to moral grief on a coral reef--" "Geraldine, you are torturing me." "Do I not quote correctly?
My point is this:--A woman will listen to talk, but she admires action.

Prove that you are ready, not to fly to a coral reef, but to do me one small service, and you may have another answer." "Name it." Mr.Fogo, peering through the bushes as one fascinated, saw an extremely beautiful woman confronting an extremely pale youth, and fancied also that he saw a curious flash of contempt pass over the woman's features as she answered-- "Really unless you kill the Admiral next time he makes a pun, I do not know that just now I need such a service.

By to-morrow, though, or the next day, I may think of one.