Flora knew it was hopeless then.  She was quite broken down, and did not raise her head from her hand, through the fingers of which, half shading her face, the tears trickled fast.  Guy heard her murmur, very low and plaintively, “I have loved you so long—­so dearly!”

Mistress as she was of every art that can deceive, I believe she only spoke the simple truth then.  With all the energy of her strong and sensual nature, I believe she did worship Livingstone.  To most men she would have been far more dangerous thus, in the abandonment of her sorrow, than ever she had been in the insolence of her splendid beauty.

There are some women, very few (Johnson’s fair friend, Sophy Streatfield, was one), whom weeping does not disfigure.  Their eyelids do not get red or swollen; only the iris softens for a moment; and the drops do not streak or blot the polished cheeks, but glitter there, singly, like dew on marble; their sobs are well regulated, and follow in a certain rhythm; and the heaving bosom sinks and swells, not too stormily.  It is a rare accomplishment.  Miss Bellasys had not practiced it often, being essentially Democritian—­not to say Rabelaisian—­in her philosophy; but she did it very well.  Like every other emotion, it became her.

Guy hardly glanced at her, and never answered a word.

She rose to go; then turned all at once to try one effort more.  “Yes, we must part,” she said.  “I know it now.  But give me a kind word to take with me.  I shall be so lonely, now that you are my enemy.  Will you not say you wish me well?  Ah!  Guy, remember all the hours that I have tried to make pleasant for you.  Say ‘Good-by, Flora,’ only those two little words, gently.”  Her voice was broken and uncertain, but full of music still, like the wind wandering through an organ.

Just at that moment I opened the door. (I had not an idea Livingstone was not alone.) I closed it before either had remarked my entrance, but not before I had caught sight of a very striking picture.

Guy was leaning one arm against the mantel-piece; the other was crossed over his chest:  on that arm Flora was clinging, with both her hands clenched in the passion of her appeal.  Her slight bonnet had fallen rather back, showing the masses of her glorious hair, and all her flushed cheeks, and her eyes that shone with a strange lustre, though there were tears still on their long, trailing lashes.  I saw the impersonation of material life, exuberant and vigorous, yet delicately lovely—­the Lust of the Eye incarnate.

He stood perfectly still, making no effort to cast her off.  Had he done so with violence, it would scarcely have evinced more repulsion than did the expression of his face.  There was no more of yielding or softening in the set features and severe eyes than you would find in those of a corpse three hours old, whose spirit has passed in some great anger or pain.  Can you guess what made him more than ever hard and unrelenting?  He was thinking who tried to win a kind farewell from him six months ago, and utterly failed.  Should her rival have this triumph, too, over the dead?