That was the only lash that fell from her. And she did not direct it upon him, but it whipped across the nakedness of his mind with a stinging blow. He winced under it. It made him long to be that man. Yet still, there was his desire; still there was the fear, that circumstance would balk him of his oblivion.
"Why do you say that?" he asked.
"Because, I thought you would be different," she said.
"I'm as human as the rest," said he. "I'm the crank, of course--but I'm a human crank. Will you come back to me again?"
She rose to her knees again. She was trembling, but she took his hand in hers and gripped it hard to hide it from him.
"What will you say afterwards?" she asked gently. "What will you feel? You'll be full of remorse. You'll hate me. You'll hate yourself. What about your ideal?"
"I have none," he exclaimed blindly.
"I said that once," she whispered--"and you said I was wrong, that I had an ideal, that everybody had, only they lost sight of it."
He remembered all that. He remembered the reasoning of his mind. He knew it was true. He knew it was true even then.
"Now you've lost sight of yours," she continued. "But you'll see it again, you'll realise it again to-morrow, and then--heavens! How you'll hate me! How you'll hate yourself."