"
Lord Holme bit through his cigarette.
"Sometimes I wish you were an ugly woman," he muttered.
"And if I were?"
She leaned forward quite eagerly on the sofa and her whimsical,
spoilt-child manner dropped away from her.
"You ain't."
"Don't be silly. I know I'm not, of course. But if I were to become one?"
"What?"
"Really, Fritz, there's no sort of continuity in your mental processes.
If I were to become an ugly woman, what would you feel about me then?"
"How the deuce could you become ugly?"
"Oh, in a hundred ways. I might have smallpox and be pitted for life, or
be scalded in the face as poor people's babies often are, or have vitriol
thrown over me as lots of women do in Paris, or any number of things."
"What rot! Who'd throw vitriol over you, I should like to know?"
He lit a fresh cigarette with tender solicitude. Lady Holme began to look
irritated.
"Do use your imagination!" she cried.
"Haven't got one, thank God!" he returned philosophically.
"I insist upon your imagining me ugly. Do you hear, I insist upon it."
She laid one soft hand on his knee and squeezed his leg with all her
might.
"Now you're to imagine me ugly and just the same as I am now."
"You wouldn't be the same."
"Yes, I should. I should be the same woman, with the same heart and
feelings and desires and things as I have now. Only the face would be
altered."
"Well, go ahead, but don't pinch so, old girl.
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