He might not have grudged her the last word, had she properly needed it. Its utter superfluity—the perfection of her victory without it— was what galled him. Yes, she had outflanked him, taken him unawares, and he had fired not one shot. Esprit de l'escalier—it was as he went upstairs that he saw how he might yet have snatched from her, if not the victory, the palm. Of course he ought to have laughed aloud— "Capital, capital! You really do deserve to fool me. But ah, yours is a love that can't be dissembled. Never was man by maiden loved more ardently than I by you, my poor girl, at this moment."
And stay!--what if she really HAD been but pretending to have killed her love? He paused on the threshold of his room. The sudden doubt made his lost chance the more sickening. Yet was the doubt dear to him . . . What likelier, after all, than that she had been pretending? She had already twitted him with his lack of intuition. He had not seen that she loved him when she certainly did love him. He had needed
