"Ask yourself--not me. Ask yourself what you've been doing, and plotting, and amusing yourself about of late. Ask yourself who 'tis you meet in this place and that!"
"Well, I never! So you've been interested in me all the time! Interested enough to care what I was doing and thinking about. By all right understanding that ought to mean you cared a bit for me. Women don't spy on a man, save for love or hate. And hate me you can't without a cause, though you speak and look as if you did. If I thought you were jealous--but that's too good to be true. Who is it? Out with it.' At least I've a right to know who 'tis that I meet so secret while you peep at us."
He bantered her and cared little that she grew rosy and furious; for he knew it was all over now and that they would probably never speak together again.
"You ask that and pretend--and pretend!" she burst out. "As if it might be a score of women! But I know, and 'twasn't for love nor yet hate that I watched you--not for love of you or her anyway."
"Come now--no puzzles! Then I'm after another man's sweetheart on the quiet. Is that it? Well, who is she? I've a right to know in the face of such a charge."
"You're after another man's wife," she said, and faced him without flinching. But still he laughed.
"You maidens! What hen dragons of virtue you are, to be sure. 'Another man's wife'--eh? Then no wonder you look a thought awry at me. Poor fellow! He's terribly wronged, to be sure. Have you told him what I'm doing? Or are you in love with this other chap?"
"Go," she said furiously. "You know the truth in your wicked heart, and I know it, and it's devilish in you to take it like this. I'll suffer no more of you; I'll never breathe the same air with you no more;--and them I care about shan't, if I can help it. You ought to be torn in a thousand pieces by honest men and women--vile thing that you are!"
He sat down calmly and patted a dog that rose from the hearth and growled at him in some uneasiness before Rhoda's fury.
"Can't leave you like this--must understand what you're driving at," he declared.