"I have a message for you—come inside."
"A message! Sapristi! Then I must know it. Open your door."
Lettice closed the window and the shutters, and brought her visitor inside.
The woman of the study and the woman of the pavement looked at each other, standing face to face for some minutes without speaking a word. They were a contrast of civilization, whom nature had not intended to contrast, and it would have been difficult to find a stronger antagonism between two women who under identical training and circumstances might have been expected to develop similar tastes, and character, and bearing. Both had strong and well-turned figures, above the middle height, erect and striking, both had noble features, natural grace and vivacity, constitutions which fitted them for keen enjoyment and zest in life. But from their infancy onward they had been subjected to influences as different as it is possible to imagine. To one duty had been the ideal and the guide of existence; the other had been taught to aim at pleasure as the supreme good. One had ripened into a self-sacrificing woman, to whom a spontaneous feeling of duty was more imperative than the rules and laws in which she had been trained; the other had degenerated into a wretched slave of her instincts, for whom the pursuit of pleasure had become a hateful yet inevitable servitude. Perhaps, as they stood side by side, the immeasurable distance which divided them mind from mind and body from body was apparent to both. Perhaps each thought at that moment of the man whose life they had so deeply affected—perhaps each realized what Alan Walcott must have thought and felt about the other.
"Why have you brought me here?" said Cora at last in a defiant voice.
"It was a sudden thought. I saw you, and I wanted to speak to you."
"Then you have no message as you pretended? You are very polite, mademoiselle. You are pleased to amuse yourself at my expense?"
"No, I am not amusing myself," said Lettice. There was a ring of sadness in her tones, which did not escape Cora's attention. She argued weakness from it, and grew more bold.
"Are you not afraid?" she said, menacingly. "Do you not think that I have the power to hurt—as I have hurt you before—the power, and, still more, the will?"
"I am not afraid."