"Oh, with what bated, half-mouthed words you speak,—fit for a girl from a nursery! Out with it if you have anything to say against me! You owe me so much at any rate. I have never ill-treated you. I have never lied to you. I have taken nothing from you,—if I have not taken your heart. I have given you all that I have to give." Then she leaped to her feet and stood a little apart from him. "If you hate me, say so."
"Winifrid," he said, calling her by her name.
"Winifrid! Yes, now for the first time, though I have called you Paul from the moment you entered the room. Well, speak out. Is there another woman that you love?"
At this moment Paul Montague proved that at any rate he was no coward. Knowing the nature of the woman, how ardent, how impetuous she could be, and how full of wrath, he had come at her call intending to tell her the truth which he now spoke. "There is another," he said.
She stood silent, looking into his face, thinking how she would commence her attack upon him. She fixed her eyes upon him, standing quite upright, squeezing her own right hand with the fingers of the left. "Oh," she said, in a whisper;—"that is the reason why I am told that I am to be—off."
"That was not the reason."
"What;—can there be more reason than that,—better reason than that? Unless, indeed, it be that as you have learned to love another so also you have learned to—hate me."
"Listen to me, Winifrid."
"No, sir; no Winifrid now! How did you dare to kiss me, knowing that it was on your tongue to tell me I was to be cast aside? And so you love—some other woman! I am too old to please you, too rough,—too little like the dolls of your own country! What were your—other reasons? Let me hear your—other reasons, that I may tell you that they are lies."
The reasons were very difficult to tell, though when put forward by Roger Carbury they had been easily pleaded. Paul knew but little about Winifrid Hurtle, and nothing at all about the late Mr. Hurtle. His reasons curtly put forward might have been so stated. "We know too little of each other," he said.