“Go,” she cried to Charles again, “and I will give him up.”
“Katherine,” he said, “and you would do this thing?”
“Why?” she retorted, “what is this man's life beside mine? His soul is dead! I tell you, Charles, that I have come through Hell alive to gain one ray of happiness! But go!—and leave the rest to me.”
And she grasped the bell cord and pulled it. Pulled it again and again. The sound wandered crazily through what remote corridors I know not.
She made a step towards him. He leaped to his feet with an oath, with loathing in his eyes, shrank back from her, and held out a hand as if to ward off some unclean thing.
Bewilderment lined her face. She groped to understand. And then, as the full significance of his gesture came home to her, she winced and swayed as if from a blow; and the pistol dropped from her loosened grasp to the floor.
“You—you abandon me?” she said slowly. “You desert me, then? Love, Love, think how I have loved you that I did this thing! And is what I have suffered—what I have done—still to purchase—nothing?”
She pleaded for my death; but I hope that I shall never again see on any human face the look of despair that was on hers. I pitied her!
Heavy feet on the stairway woke me from my trance. Unregarded of them both I grasped my pistol from the floor and sprang for the window. A door opened somewhere above, and a voice asked:
“You rang, Ma'am?”