She was so wonderful then.
It mellowed his mood toward her.
“That’s all you know about it, you liar!” she declared.
“It’s little you know what I know.
I haven’t had detectives on your trail for weeks for nothing.
You sneak!
You’d like to smooth around now and find 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.
Cowperwood saw them and came over, hoping in some way to take advantage of them.
He was truly sorry now—anxious to make her feel tender toward him once more.