You don't know
what love is--"
"I suppose you are about to say that you think I think I am cold, and that
if I labor under this delusion it is only because the right man hasn't come
along. Well, Jimmie dear, you would only be the sixteenth. I suppose men
will keep on saying it until I am forty--forty-five--what is the limit
these days? I know exactly what I am and you don't"
"I'm not going to be put off by words. Remember I'm a lawyer of sorts. God!
I wish I'd been here when you married that codfish, instead of studying law
at Columbia, Do you mean to tell me I couldn't have won you!"
"No. Almost any man can win a little goose of eighteen if circumstances
favor him. Twenty-five is another! matter. Oh, but vastly another! Even if
I'd never married before I'm not at all sure I should have fallen in love
with you."
"Yes, you would. You're frozen over, that's all."
Alexina sighed, and not with exasperation. He was very charming, magnetic,
companionable. He was handsome and clever and manly. She could feel the
warmth of his young virile body through their fur coats, and her own
trembled a little....It suddenly came to her that she no longer owed
Mortimer anything. Their "partnership" had been dissolved by his own act.
If she could have loved Jimmie Thorne with something beyond the agreeable
response of the mating-season (any season is the mating season in
California).
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