'I was looking for you.'
'You seem to have looked a good deal.'
'But I found you at last.'
'I had rather you had found me at first, Frank.' He said something about supper, but she was not to be turned.
'How many did you really love?' she asked. 'Please don't joke about it, Frank. I really want to know.'
'If I choose to tell you a lie--'
'But you won't!'
'No, I won't. I could never feel the same again.'
'Well, then, how many did you love?'
'Don't exaggerate what I say, Maude, or take it to heart. You see it depends upon what you mean by love. There are all sorts and degrees of love, some just the whim of a moment, and others the passion of a lifetime; some are founded on mere physical passion, and some on intellectual sympathy, and some on spiritual affinity.'
'Which do you love me with?'
'All three.'
'Sure?'
'Perfectly sure.'
She came over and the cross-examination was interrupted. But in a few minutes she had settled down to it again.
'Well, now--the first?' said she.
'Oh, I can't, Maude--don't.'
'Come, sir--her name?'
'No, no, Maude, that is going a little too far. Even to you, I should never mention another woman's name.'
'Who was she, then?'
'Please don't let us go into details. It is perfectly HORRIBLE. Let me tell things in my own way.'
She made a little grimace.
'You are wriggling, sir. But I won't be hard upon you. Tell it your own way.'
'Well, in a word, Maude, I was always in love with some one.'
Her face clouded over.
'Your love must be very cheap,' said she.
'It's almost a necessity of existence for a healthy young man who has imagination and a warm heart. It was all--or nearly all--quite superficial.'
'I should think all your love was superficial, if it can come so easily.'
'Don't be cross, Maude. I had never seen you at the time. I owed no duty to you.'
'You owed a duty to your own self-respect.'
'There, I knew we should have trouble over it. What do you want to ask such questions for? I dare say I am a fool to be so frank.'
She sat for a little with her face quite cold and set. In his inmost heart Frank was glad that she should be jealous, and he watched her out of the corner of his eye.
'Well!' said she at last.
'Must I go on?'
'Yes, I may as well hear it.'
'You'll only be cross.'
'We've gone too far to stop. And I'm not cross, Frank. Only pained a little. But I do appreciate your frankness. I had no idea you were such a--such a Mormon.' She began to laugh.
'I used to take an interest in every woman.'
'"Take an interest" is good.'
'That was how it began. And then if circumstances were favourable the interest deepened, until at last, naturally--well, you can understand.'
'How many did you take an interest in?'
'Well, in pretty nearly all of them.'
'And how many deepened?'
'Oh, I don't know.'
'Twenty?'
'Well--rather more than that, I think.'
'Thirty?'
'Quite thirty.'
'Forty?'
'Not more than forty, I think.'
Maude sat aghast at the depths of his depravity.
'Let me see: you are twenty-seven now, so you have loved four women a year since you were seventeen.'
'If you reckon it that way,' said Frank, 'I am afraid that it must have been more than forty.'
'It's dreadful,' said Maude, and began to cry.
Frank knelt down in front of her and kissed her hands. She had sweet little plump hands, very soft and velvety.
'You make me feel such a brute,' said he. 'Anyhow, I love you now with all my heart and mind and soul.'
'Forty-firstly and lastly,' she sobbed, half laughing and half crying. Then she pulled his hair to reassure him.
'I can't be angry with you,' said she. 'Besides, it would be ungenerous to be angry when you tell me things of your own free will. You are not forced to tell me. It is very honourable of you. But I do wish you had taken an interest in me first.'
'Well, it was not so fated. I suppose there are some men who are quite good when they are bachelors. But I don't believe they are the best men.