"The person you have got to consider chiefly in all this is Belinda."
Now he stared at her.
"Belinda?" he stammered.
Sophy's face and voice grew hot. It seemed as though even Fate's bludgeonings couldn't drub impulse out of her. She wrestled now with this impulse for a moment. It got the better of her.
"For shame!" she cried. "Oh ... for shame! for shame! A young girl ... in your own house ... you treat her like that ... your own kinswoman.... Oh, yes! I know.... But by bringing-up she is your kinswoman.... You do this ... you do this...." She was stammering with the heavy heart-beats that again suffocated her. "And then ... to me ... you speak.... Oh, let me breathe!" she cried, and stood up as if throwing off some intolerable weight.
Loring stood changing from red to white, from white to red. His eyes shone sullenly. His head was lowered in that way she knew. He looked up at her defiantly from under the beautiful arch of the brows that she had once loved. "Well?... And what course has your superiority mapped out for me?" he sneered finally.
She said in a cold voice:
"I have 'mapped out' nothing. But there seems only one way to me.... To be quite truthful about it all. Then ... to act truly."
He gave his ugly little laugh.
"Perhaps you'll favour me with your ideas on 'acting truly'?"