out
what I know. Well, I know enough, let me tell you that. You won't
fool me any longer with your Rita Sohlbergs and your Antoinette Nowaks
and your apartments and your houses of assignation. I know what you
are, you brute! And after all your protestations of love for me! Ugh!"

She turned fiercely to her task while Cowperwood stared at her, touched
by her passion, moved by her force. It was fine to see what a dramatic
animal she was--really worthy of him in many ways.

"Aileen," he said, softly, hoping still to ingratiate himself by
degrees, "please don't be so bitter toward me. Haven't you any
understanding of how life works--any sympathy with it? I thought you
were more generous, more tender. I'm not so bad."

He eyed her thoughtfully, tenderly, hoping to move her through her love
for him.

"Sympathy! Sympathy!" She turned on him blazing. "A lot you know about
sympathy! I suppose I didn't give you any sympathy when you were in the
penitentiary in Philadelphia, did I? A lot of good it did me--didn't
it? Sympathy! Bah! To have you come out here to Chicago and take up
with a lot of prostitutes--cheap stenographers and wives of musicians!
You have given me a lot of sympathy, haven't you?--with that woman
lying in the next room to prove it!"

She smoothed her lithe waist and shook her shoulders preparatory to
putting on a hat and adjusting her wrap. She proposed to go just as
she was, and send Fadette back for all her belongings.

"Aileen," he pleaded, determined to have his way, "I think you're very
foolish. Really I do. There is no occasion for all this--none in the
world. Here you are talking at the top of your voice, scandalizing the
whole neighborhood, fighting, leaving the house. It's abominable. I
don't want you to do it. You love me yet, don't you? You know you do.
I know you don't mean all you say. You can't. You really don't believe
that I have ceased to love you, do you, Aileen?"

"Love!" fired Aileen. "A lot you know about love! A lot you have ever
loved anybody, you brute! I know how you love. I thought you loved me
once. Humph! I see how you loved me--just as you've loved fifty other
women, as you love that snippy little Rita Sohlberg in the next
room--the cat!--the dirty little beast!--the way you love Antoinette
Nowak--a cheap stenographer! Bah! You don't know what the word means."
And yet her voice trailed off into a kind of sob and her eyes filled
with tears, hot, angry, aching