She made no answer, simply sighed and drooped. When the country was ringing with denunciations of him, "He will see the truth now," she had said to herself, "now that the whole world is showing it to him instead of only one person and she a woman." Then, with the bursting of the great storm over his single head, she dismissed all but the one central truth, that she loved him, and came straightway to New York.
Well, here they were face to face; and as she looked at him in his strength and haughtiness, she saw in his face, as if etched in steel, inflexible determination to persist in the course that was making him an object of public infamy, justly, she had to admit. "The madness for money and for crushing down his fellow beings has him fast," she thought. "There isn't anything left in him for his good instincts to work on." She seated herself wearily.
"Let's talk no more about it," she said to him.
"You've been reading the papers?" he asked.
"Yes—I read—all."
"It must have been painful to you," said he with stolid sarcasm.
She did not answer. In this mood of what seemed to her the most shameless defiance of all that a human being would respect if he had even a remnant of self-respect, he was almost repellent.
"So," he went on, in that same stolid way, "you sent for me to revel in that self-righteousness you paraded the last time I saw you. Well, it will chagrin you, I fear, to learn that the scoundrel you tried to redeem will escape from the toils again, and resume his wicked way."
"I wish you would go," she entreated. "I can't bear it to-day."
She was taking off her hat now, was having great difficulty in finding its pins; its black fur brought out all the beauty of her bright brown hair. The graceful, fascinating movements of her head, her arms, her fingers, put that into his fury which made it take the bit in its teeth.