’Percy, if you suspect that I have uttered one
word before last night, you are wrong. I cannot
paint my temptation or my loss of sense last night.
Previously I was blameless. I thirsted, yes; but
in the hope of helping you.’
He looked at her. She perceived how glitteringly
loveless his eyes had grown. It was her punishment;
and though the enamoured woman’s heart protested
it excessive, she accepted it.
‘I can never trust you again,’ he said.
‘I fear you will not,’ she replied.
His coming back to her after the departure of the
guests last night shone on him in splendid colours
of single-minded loverlike devotion. ’I
came to speak to my own heart. I thought it would
give you pleasure; thought I could trust you utterly.
I had not the slightest conception I was imperilling
my honour . . . !’
He stopped. Her bloodless fixed features revealed
an intensity of anguish that checked him. Only
her mouth, a little open for the sharp breath, appeared
dumbly beseeching. Her large eyes met his like
steel to steel, as of one who would die fronting the
weapon.
He strangled a loathsome inclination to admire.
‘So good bye,’ he said.
She moved her lips.
He said no more. In half a minute he was gone.
To her it was the plucking of life out of her breast.
She pressed her hands where heart had been. The
pallor and cold of death took her body.
Reveals how the true heroine
of romance comes finally to
her, time of
triumph
The shutting of her house-door closed for Dacier that
woman’s history in connection with himself.
He set his mind on the consequences of the act of
folly—the trusting a secret to a woman.
All were possibly not so bad: none should be
trusted.
The air of the street fanned him agreeably as he revolved
the horrible project of confession to the man who
had put faith in him. Particulars might be asked.
She would be unnamed, but an imagination of the effect
of naming her placarded a notorious woman in fresh
paint: two members of the same family her victims!
And last night, no later than last night, he had swung
round at this very corner of the street to give her
the fullest proof of his affection. He beheld
a dupe trotting into a carefully-laid pitfall.
She had him by the generosity of his confidence in
her. Moreover, the recollection of her recent
feeble phrasing, when she stood convicted of the treachery,
when a really clever woman would have developed her
resources, led him to doubt her being so finely gifted.
She was just clever enough to hoodwink. He attributed
the dupery to a trick of imposing the idea of her virtue
upon men. Attracted by her good looks and sparkle,
they entered the circle of her charm, became delightfully
