Whatever she may have seen or guessed by it--and something she must have divined, or her proud spirit would never have so far bent as to allow her to come hither with her proposal--he would not grant her the triumph of again beholding it or of convincing herself of its true meaning.
He remained perfect master of himself, and left her a prey to torturing doubt. Her woman's instinct had spoken unhesitatingly when Ulric Hartmann's look had glowed upon her yesterday up on the forest heights, and, with the knowledge of what lay behind, horror of it had seized her as well. Yet she had been quite calm then, through all the danger with which she was threatened by an insane passion.
Here, where there was nothing to fear, she shook from head to foot in a fever of emotion, and a thick veil seemed to fall on all around, just as the brown eyes opposite were veiled before her. The inward voice was silent now, and yet at this moment she would have given her life to have acquired a certainty.
"You should not make it so hard for me to stay." Her voice betrayed something of the perplexity within her; it wavered between pride and soft submission. "I had much to fight against and much to conquer before I came here. You know it, Arthur, and should spare me."
The words were almost supplicating, but Arthur had reached such a pitch of irritation, he could no longer understand this. The bitter rage, which had taken possession of him and now shook his whole frame, gave its own interpretation to her words, and he answered sharply.
"I do not doubt that the Baroness Windeg is making an immense sacrifice in resolving to bear a hated name yet three months longer, and to remain at the side of a man she so thoroughly despises, notwithstanding that immediate freedom is offered her. I had to hear once how repugnant both are to you, and can judge therefore of what the victory over yourself must have cost you."
"You are reproaching me with the conversation we had on the night of our arrival," said Eugénie in a low tone. "I ... I had forgotten it!"
His eyes blazed now, but not with the light she had sought and hoped for. He was too distant from her, too full of hostility, for that.
"Really? And you do not ask whether I have forgotten it. I was forced to listen then, but that was the limit of what I could bear. Do you think a man will allow himself to be trampled in the dust with impunity, as I was by you on that evening, and then rise from it without further ado when it pleases you to alter your opinion? I was not quite so miserably weak as you imagined; from that time forth I was not weak at all. That hour was decisive for me, but it was decisive for our future also. Whatever may befall me, I will bear it alone. During the last few weeks I have learnt so much, I shall be able to go through with that too, but"--he drew himself up with a glow of pride--"but the woman who on the day after our wedding repulsed me with such haughty contempt, without condescending to ask whether the husband to whom she had given her hand were really as culpable as she believed him, who received my assurance, my given word, that she was in error as the ready pretext of a liar, who, to my question as to whether it might not be worth while to try and redeem so lost a man, flung at me that contemptuous 'No'--that woman shall not stay by me; I will not have her at my side while I am fighting for all my future in this world. I will stand alone!"
He turned away from her in his wrath. Eugénie stood overwhelmed and speechless. Great as had been the change in her husband of late, she had never before seen him roused to passion, and at this moment his violence almost frightened her. By the storm, now bursting over her head, she could measure all that had lain hidden behind the indifference which had so revolted her, all that had smouldered within him for months together, until at last it drove him out of that apathy which had become a second nature.