"Oh, Ellen," he pleaded, "unsay those cutting words, they pierce me to the heart—never loved me—hate—oh, do not strike me so hard!"
"Hate!" sneered the woman. "No, no, that is not the word, it does not express enough; I want a stronger language, something that will combine loathing, detestation, and scorn, all in one word, that I may fling it at you, and go!"
"Ellen, Ellen!"
She took no heed of this agonized cry, but went on, her cheeks blanched, and her eyes aflame with passion. "The only drop of comfort I have," she raved, "is, that I can for once speak out, and throw off the load of hate that has fevered every drop of blood in my veins since the day I married you."
He did not attempt to answer her now. The scathing words she had uttered seemed to freeze the life from his whole system. He stood looking upon her with wild, dreary eyes, his whole face so coldly white that she paused, drawing a sharp breath, even in the headlong passion that possessed her.
At last he spoke, but the hollow sound of his voice made her shiver.
"You hate me—and I, who loved you better than truth, better than honor, better than my own soul—hate you, Ellen Mason!"
She was petrified. The fearful violence of her passion had borne her too far—fallen as he was, the man possessed power. There was his secret; with all her patient craft she had failed to win that, and now it would be buried with him in the prison to which he must inevitably go. She looked keenly in his face; it was hard as granite, and his eyes seemed scarcely human from the fire that smouldered in them, giving dusky force to the circles underneath. She knew that at last her power had been wholly swept away. She saw this with a pang. The whole scene had come upon her so suddenly, that she could not yet realize her true position—that he was not, and never had been her husband; that before the world she was a disgraced woman. She remembered, with a thrill of terror, how the measures taken only to protect her pride, and save her from the intrusions of Thrasher's family, would now tell against her. The name partially suppressed, the false history of her position, all would go to prove complicity with the criminal whom she had just exasperated into a bitter enemy.
Stung with this conviction, she stood before Thrasher in the full humiliation of a haughty spirit overthrown.
A stern sneer crept to his lips as he looked upon her. He turned and moved toward the door.