“Tell me at once or——”
“Ay yes,” she said with a steady look, “you will drag the secret out, will you?”
She tore open her dress and exposed her snow-white throat.
“See, there it is handy. Take a knife and cut my throat. See if I shall flinch. The last gurgle of my blood bubbling up through the wound, shall bear a sound of mocking laughter. Strike!”
Ezra turned from her in horror. “She must be mad,” he said to Uncle David.
“Not mad now, I have been mad all these months, all these years. Mad to love you, mad in loving such a one as you. Now I am sane. Ah, how I hate you!”
“This is horrible,” said Ezra, putting his hand before his eyes.
“Horrible, is it? It is the waking from love’s young dream. Ha, ha!”
“Madame, dear child, think of all you have been to us,” said Uncle David, reaching his hands out to her imploringly. “You have led us, think of all that.”
“I do think of all that. I think of how I found this boy,” she said, pointing in scorn to Ezra, “ignorant, unformed, with wild crude longings. I think of how I infused light and life into the darkness of his mind. How I rose, aye, above myself, in order to lead him up and on. I think of all his half-formed longings put into working form and endowed with vital power that he might see his thoughts taking shape. I made him. He was mine. Then he left me for a few brief weeks. He saw a pretty doll’s face with an empty head, and straightway he loves with never a thought of me. You ask me to think. I do think of how even this I bore, and so great was my love that for his sake I welcomed the doll that had stolen my place, and smiled on her. Even this I did and remained his friend. She, the doll, attracted by a handsome face, her love aroused by the stolen kisses of a yellow moustache, left him. Then I was free to love him once more. I laid my heart at his feet. He spurned me. All my love was as nothing against the memory of the doll who had deserted him. She may die and rot before word of mine shall restore her to him.”