ain. You've been home just one evening in the
last eight days, long enough for me to get more than a glimpse of you.
Don't talk to me. Don't try to bill and coo. I've always known. Don't
think I don't know who your latest flame is. But don't begin to whine,
and don't quarrel with me if I go about and get interested in other
men, as I certainly will. It will be all your fault if I do, and you
know it. Don't begin and complain. It won't do you any good. I'm not
going to sit here and be made a fool of. I've told you that over and
over. You don't believe it, but I'm not. I told you that I'd find
some one one of these days, and I will. As a matter of fact, I have
already."

At this remark Cowperwood surveyed her coolly, critically, and yet not
unsympathetically; but she swung out of the room with a defiant air
before anything could be said, and went down to the music-room, from
whence a few moments later there rolled up to him from the hall below
the strains of the second Hungarian Rhapsodie, feelingly and for once
movingly played. Into it Aileen put some of her own wild woe and
misery. Cowperwood hated the thought for the moment that some one as
smug as Lynde--so good-looking, so suave a society rake--should
interest Aileen; but if it must be, it must be. He could have no
honest reason for complaint. At the same time a breath of real sorrow
for the days that had gone swept over him. He remembered her in
Philadelphia in her red cape as a school-girl--in his father's
house--out horseback-riding, driving. What a splendid, loving girl she
had been--such a sweet fool of love. Could she really have decided not
to worry about him any more? Could it be possible that she might find
some one else who would be interested in her, and in whom she would
take a keen interest? It was an odd thought for him.

He watched her as she came into the dining-room later, arrayed in green
silk of the shade of copper patina, her hair done in a high coil--and
in spite of himself he could not help admiring her. She looked very
young in her soul, and yet moody--loving (for some one), eager, and
defiant. He reflected for a moment what terrible things passion and
love are--how they make fools of us all. "All of us are in the grip of
a great creative impulse," he said to himself. He talked of other
things for a while--the approaching election, a poster-wagon he had
seen bearing the question, "Shall Cowperwood own the city?" "Pretty
c