It was great daring, but I felt that I must strip away this mask of heartless raillery which galled and pained me beyond endurance. I would know the truth at any cost. If this coquette of flouts and jibes who laughed at men with one breath and made light of even her mother’s sufferings with the next, was the real woman whom I had set in the inmost shrine of my heart, the sooner I was away the better.
The mask fell, but not at once.
She met my gaze steadily, almost defiantly, and the blood rushed to her face as she read my look and strove to force a laugh and utter a jest in reply. But the words would not come.
“You understand me,” I said, in the same deliberate tone. “You are either the most heartless jilt who ever trifled with the best feelings of men in order to be able to boast of your triumphs afterwards, or you are deliberately playing the part for some purpose of your own. God forbid that I should accept your self-accusation.”
“I will go——” she began and half rose. But the reaction came then. The crimson faded from her face, leaving it white and strained. She hid it behind her hands as she sank back in the chair, her head lowered, trembling in agitation.
I was answered and without a word I rose and left her that she might be alone while she recovered her self-command.
With a rare feeling of exultation I renewed all that had passed in the light of my new knowledge. She had set herself purposely to disgust me with the gibbering caricature she had drawn of herself. And my heart thrilled and my blood raced through my veins as I saw that my reading of her conduct on the evening of the reception had been right.
Many minutes passed as I paced the deck deciding the course I would take, and not until I had settled it did I return to her.
She had regained her self-possession, but as I sat down she looked at me questioningly and nervously as if fearing how I should refer to the secret I had surprised. But there was not a vestige of the mask left. She was just herself.
“The wind is dropping again already,” I said in a casual tone.