Eden aroused herself ever so little from her reverie. "Nothing," she answered. "I wish you would go away."
"Something is the matter," he insisted. "Tell me what is troubling you. Who is there to whom you can turn more readily than to me? Eden, you forget so easily. For months I was at your side. And abruptly, a rumor, a whisper, a wind that passes took you from me. Eden, I have not changed. Nor have you ceased to preside over my life. It is idle and useless enough, I know. With your aid it would have been less valueless, I think; but such as it is, it is wholly yours. Tell me, what it is that troubles you."
And Eden, influenced either by the caress of the words or that longing which in moments of mental anguish forces us to voice the affliction, though it be but to a wall, looked in his face and answered:
"A hole has been dug in my heart, and in that hole is hate."
"Hate? Why, hate is a mediæval emotion; you don't know what it means." And as he spoke he told himself she was mad.
"Do I not? Ah, do I not?" She beat a measure on her knee with her fingers, and her eyes roamed from Maule to the ceiling and then far into space. "There is one whom I think of now; could I see him smitten with agony such as no mortal ever felt before, his eyes filled with spectres, his brain aflame—could I see that and know it to be my work, I should lie down glad and willing, and die of delight."
She stood up and turned to him again. "Do I not know what hatred means?"
"Eden, you understand it so well that your conception of love must be clearer still."
"Love, indeed!" She laughed disdainfully. "Why, love is a fever that ends with a yawn. Love! Why, men used to die of love. Now they buy it as they buy their hats, ready-made."
"Then I am in that fever now—Hush! here is your husband. The tenor wasn't half bad, I admit. Mr. Usselex, I am glad to see you."