She stopped suddenly, as if some new idea had crossed her mind. In a moment, however, she began again, but she was speaking to herself.
"No. I had to come. There was no other way. I dared not leave those letters in his hands. Oh! how I hate him!"
She uttered the words with a slow intensity which enforced conviction, looking straight at Gordon; and he saw a flame commence to glow in the depths of her eyes and spread until her whole face was ablaze with it.
"Do you mean that?" he queried, almost eagerly.
"Can you doubt it?" she replied, starting to her feet. "Oh, yes, you would! I forgot. Oh, David, if only you had understood me better!"
It was what he had been saying to himself, with a deep self-reproach, and her repetition of his thought, coupled with a weary gesture of despair, exaggerated the feeling on him by the addition of a very lively pity.
"So that is true, then?" he asked, hesitatingly. "You no longer care for him?"
The mere weakness of the question betokened a mind in doubt, as to its choice of action, betrayed a certain tentative indecision.
"I never really cared for him," she answered.
A look of actual gladness showed in the man's face. They were standing opposite to one another, and the girl shut her eyelids tight, as if the sight hurt her.