"
"I pinch you to make you exert your mind. Now tell me truly--truly; would
you love me as you do now, would you be jealous of me, would you--"
"I say, wait a bit! Don't drive on at such a rate. How ugly are you?"
"Very ugly; worse than Miss Filberte."
"Miss Filberte's not so bad."
"Yes, she is, Fritz, you know she is. But I mean ever so much worse; with
a purple complexion, perhaps, like Mrs. Armington, whose husband insisted
on a judicial separation; or a broken nose, or something wrong with my
mouth--"
"What wrong?"
"Oh, dear, anything! What /l'homme qui vir/ had--or a frightful scar
across my cheek. Could you love me as you do now? I should be the same
woman, remember."
"Then it'd be all the same to me, I s'pose. Let's turn in."
He got up, went over to the hearth, on which a small wood fire was
burning, straddled his legs, bent his knees and straightened them several
times, thrusting his hands into the pockets of his trousers, which were
rather tight and horsey and defined his immense limbs. An expression of
profound self-satisfaction illumined his face as he looked at his wife,
giving it a slightly leery expression, as of a shrewd rustic. His large
blunt features seemed to broaden, his big brown eyes twinkled, and his
lips, which were thick and very red and had a cleft down their middle,
parted under his short bronze moustache, exposing two level rows of
square white teeth.
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