"What say you to this, Juanita? 'If we are still able to love one who
has made us suffer, we love him more than ever.' Is that true to your
experience?"
"No," I answered, for I liked at times to approach the topic which was
always uppermost in my mind, and to see his perfect unconsciousness of
it. "If any one had made me suffer, I should not stop to inquire
whether I were able to love him still or not; I should have but one
thought left,--revenge!"
"How very fierce!" he said, laughing. "And your idea of revenge
is--what? To stab him with your own white hand?"
"No!" I said, scornfully. "To kill a person you hate is, to my mind,
the most pitiful idea of vengeance. What! put him out of the world at
once? Not so! He should live," I said, fixing my eyes upon him,--"and
live to suffer,--and to remember, in his anguish, why he suffered, and
to whose hand he owed it!"
It was a hateful speech, and would have repelled most men; for my life
I dared not have made it before John. But I knew to whom I was talking,
and that he had no objection to a slight spice of _diablerie_.
"What curious glimpses of character you open to me now and then," he
said, thoughtfully. "Not very womanly, however.
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