"After what?" he said, with an innocent, questioning look, that stung her like an insult.
The girl had her voice now. Indignation brought it back. But what could she say? In a thousand forms that man had expressed his love for her; but never once in direct words, such as even a finer nature than hers could have fashioned into a direct claim.
The wrathful agony in her eyes startled the young man from his studied apathy; but before he could reach out his arms or speak, she lifted both hands to her throat and fled downward toward the gap.
This fierce outburst of passion startled the man who had so coolly aroused it. He sprang after the girl, overtook her as she came near the precipice, increasing her speed as if she meant to leap over, and seizing her by the waist, swung her back with a force that almost threw her to the ground.
"Are you crazy?" he said, as she stood before him, fierce and panting for breath.
"No," she answered, drawing so close to him that her white face almost touched his; "but you are worse than that—stark, staring mad, I tell you—when you expect to even me with any other girl."
"Even you with any other girl!" said Storms, really startled. "As if any one ever thought of it! Why, one would think you never heard of a joke before!"
"A joke?—a joke?"
"Yes, you foolish child, you beautiful fiend—a joke on my part, but something more with the miserable old gossips that have gotten up stories to torment you. As if you had not had enough of their lies!"
Judith drew a deep breath, and looked at him with all the pitiful intensity of a dumb animal recovering from a blow.