"Beyond all doubt it had an easy death," replies she, calmly. "There could never have been much life in it. But all this is beside the question. I have yet to learn my crime. I have yet to learn what awful iniquity lies in the fact of my being with Philip Shadwell."
"You are wonderfully innocent," with a sneer. "Do you think then that my sight failed me?"
"Still I do not understand," she says, drawing herself up, with a little proud gesture. "What is it to me whether you or all the world saw me with Philip? Explain yourself."
"I will." In a low voice, almost choked with passion and despair. "You will understand when I tell you I saw him with his arms around you—you submitting—you—— And then—I saw him—kiss you. That I should live to say it of you!"
"Did you see him kiss me?" still calmly. "Your eyesight is invaluable."
"Ah! you no longer deny it? In your inmost heart no doubt you are laughing at me, poor fool that I have been. How many other times have you kissed him, I wonder, when I was not by to see?"
"Whatever faults you may have had, I acquitted you of brutality," says she, in a low, carefully suppressed tone.
"You never loved me. In that one matter at least you were honest; you never professed affection. And yet I was mad enough to think that after a time I should gain the love of a flirt,—a coquette."
"You were mad to care for the love of 'a flirt,—a coquette.'"
"I have been blind all these past weeks," goes on he, unheeding, "determined not to see (what all the rest of the world, no doubt, too plainly saw) what there was between you and Shadwell. But I am blind no longer. I am glad,—yes, thankful," cries the young man, throwing out one hand, as though desirous of proving by action the truth of his sad falsehood,—"thankful I have found you out at last,—before it was too late."