“Please read it.” His tone was abrupt. She had never heard that tone before.
She read. It was an assertion of that which her Howard most disbelieved, most protested against; a defense of the public corruption she had heard him denounce so often; an attack upon the ideas, the principles, the elements she had so often heard him eulogize. It was as adroit as it was detestable, as plausible as it was unprincipled.
When she had done, there was a long silence which he broke. “What do you think of it?”
“Only a wretch, an enemy of yours could have written it. Who can it have been?” Her eyes were ablaze and her voice trembled with anger.
“I wrote it,” he said.
He did not dare to look at her for a few seconds. Then, with a flimsy mask of pretended calmness only the more clearly revealing self-contempt and cowardice, he faced her amazed eyes, her pale cheeks, her parted lips—and dropped his gaze to the floor.
“You?” she whispered. “You?”
“Yes, I.”
She sat so still that he reached over and touched her hand. It was cold. She shivered and drew it away. They were silent for a long time—several minutes. She was looking at his face. It was old and sad and feeble—pitiful, contemptible. She had never seen those lines of weakness about his mouth before. She had never before noted that his features had lost the expression of exalted character, the light of free and independent manhood which made her look again the first time she saw him. When had the man she loved departed? When had the new man come? How long had she been giving herself to a stranger—and such a stranger?
“Yes—I,” he repeated. “I have come over to your side.” He laughed and she shivered again. “Well—what do you think?”