"What do you mean?" She was trembling, not so much under his words as from her own dreary shame. The shame had been with her all day, until she was tired with it, and the words seemed to be little separate floutings to make the burden heavier.
"Electra called you an adventuress. She had every right to."
"Yes. She had every right to." But Rose spoke with the unreasoning bitterness of youth that, finding itself in the wrong path, is sure the way, once entered, has no turning.
"She says you came here with a lie on your lips. Isn't that true?"
"But you told me"—She was seeking to get back her lost self, the one that still believed in its own integrity. "I didn't choose to lead the life she thinks I led. You told me it was the noblest thing to do."
"Ah!" He took the words out of her mouth. "I did. But did you make your stand magnificently and face the conventions you defied? No! you came here and told a lie. You chose the cheapest part you could, and played it."
His righteous anger was sweeping her away. Everything helped him, even her own sad sense of inexorable destiny and her poor desert.
"You have taken a very unfortunate step, child," he was saying. "You came here on a questionable errand. Now you have owned up to these people. They know what you are."
"Oh!" She threw out her hands at the horror of it. Until now she had not seen herself as she must be, even in Electra's eyes. His way of presenting things made them intolerably vivid.
"But they—they will not—" She quivered before him, and seemed to crouch and lessen.