“For Heaven’s sake don’t address me as if we were strangers!” he broke out. “It is a farce in which I find it impossible to play! Doris——” he stopped and drew nearer to her—“are you so hard of heart, or so light of memory, that you can forget, absolutely forget, all that passed between us—you and I? Have you forgotten Barton meadows? The day I fell off the horse at your feet? the day I told you that I loved you, and asked you to be my wife? the day you promised to be my wife?”
She shrank back against the wall, and put her hands against it as if to sustain her and keep her from falling.
“Have you clean forgotten?” he demanded, bitterly.
“I have tried to forget,” she panted.
“Oh, Heaven!” he exclaimed, with suppressed passion; “and they say women have hearts, they boast that women are gentle and merciful! You tried to forget; and, of course, you succeeded! While I——” he drew near to her and looked longingly at her pale face, all the lovelier for its pallor and the intense light shining in the beautiful eyes, the tremor on the perfectly curved lips; “while I have thought of you day by day, night by night! I swear that there is not a night in which I have not dreamed of you, in which you have not stood beside me to mock me with those eyes of yours, to murmur the vows which fell so readily from those sweet lips. Great Heavens, how cruel, how merciless even the best of you can be!”
In the fury of his agony it almost seemed as if he were about to strike her with his upraised hand, and Doris felt a wild thrill run through her as the conviction that he still loved her forced itself upon her.
“He loves me still! He loves me still!” she almost cried aloud.
“Yes, the best of you,” he repeated, dully, like a man whose senses are half numbed with pain. “For I counted you the best, and—Heaven help me!—I still count you so! Doris—I don’t know by what name I should call you, but till I die you will be ‘Doris’ to me—Doris, why did you deceive me? I have lain awake at nights trying to answer that question. I ask you to tell me now, now that all is over between us——” and he bit his lips till the blood came as he gazed at the lovely, downcast face. “All is over, and we are miles apart, worlds apart,” and he stifled a groan, “and you can tell me safely. Why did you treat me as you did? Was it simply deviltry, coquetry, what? What fun, amusement, was there in it? They said you were practising your profession upon me; that I was a mere block, which you were acting—always acting—up to. Was that true?”
She made no reply, but stood statue-like, her hands pressed against the rough wall, her heart beating in dull, heavy throbs which seemed to stifle her.
“Was it true? If so, then you were the wickedest, the cruelest woman God ever made!” he said, fiercely. “There are some women whose trade it is—professed flirts—to fool and betray men; but they carry the sign of their trade on faces and voices, and we men are aware of them. But you—you, with that innocent face of yours, with that sweet, girlish voice of yours, with those eyes whose truth a man might stake his soul upon——” he stopped and gazed at her as if his soul were slipping from him. “Why don’t you answer me?” he broke off, almost savagely.