"She looks like you."
"Don't I know it? It's my beauty that he's gone away with--the beauty I wouldn't let him see. Of course, he doesn't realize it. He only knows life cheated him, and now he's trying to make up to himself for what he's lost."
"Oh, can you excuse him like that?"
The daylight was hardening, and it threw Honora's drawn face into repellent relief.
"I don't excuse him at all!" she said. "I condemn him! I condemn him! With all his intellect, to be such a fool! And to be so cruel--so hideously cruel!"
But she checked herself sharply. She looked around her with eyes that seemed to take in things visible and invisible--all that had been enacted in that curious room, all the paraphernalia, all the significance of those uncompleted, important experiments. Then suddenly her face paled and yet burned with light.
"But I know a great revenge," she said. "I know a revenge that will break his heart!"
"Don't say things like that," begged Kate. "I don't recognize you when you're like that."
"When you hear what the revenge is, you will," said Honora proudly.
"We're going now," Kate told her with maternal decision. "Here's your coat."