He swung round at the mockingly spoken words, to find that Santa had stolen up behind him. Until now he had had no time to notice her. His anger was so intense that it held him silent. After all that she had done and had intended to do to him, she had the effrontery to jest! Did she think that he was as much her dupe as the fool who had died for her in the woods of Vincennes?
But his anger was short-lived and left him sternly cold. She was changed. Her fastidious elegance was a thing of the past. She was commonly attired as any fisher-girl. Her cheap blouse was rent at the neck; its sleeves were stained and in tatters. Her rough skirt had been nearly trodden off. She was tom and disheveled. She had suffered even more from her adventure than had Varensky. Her hat lay crushed at her feet in the grass. With her wounded hands she “was doing her best to twine the thick coils of her hair into place. She stood confessed for what she was, a fugitive from justice. The wildness of the landscape made a fitting setting. She looked startlingly untamed. She might have passed for a peasant Ophelia, except that her gray eyes were calm and her manner nonchalant.
“There are a good many things, besides missing your appointment, for which you have to apologize.”
“I can explain—”
He cut her short. “Between you and me no explanations are necessary.”
She jerked back her head, flattening her hands against her sides like a soldier standing at attention. “Why not?”
He took his time to answer. “Because you're nothing to me.”
Her face went white, then flamed scarlet, as though he had struck her with his open palm. “Nothing to you!” She spoke slowly. “I, Santa Gorlof, am nothing to you! You're the first man to whom I ever offered my heart. I would lie down in the mud that you might walk over me. I'd let you beat me like a dog if I might only follow you. I'd starve that you might be fed, go thirsty that you might drink, break my body that you might not suffer. I would die if it would give you pleasure.” Seeing that her rhetoric was having no effect, she sank her voice. “When I could have escaped, I waited for you. I risked my freedom for one last sight of you.” She clutched at her breast, choking down a sob. “And you tell me that I'm nothing to you!”
He was determined to remain unmoved by her emotion. Regarding her stonily, he asked: “What right had you to believe that you were anything to me?”
She laughed forlornly. “No right at all.”