That astounded him.
"Do you mean you dared to try that game on me? You little gutter-bred liar!" Suddenly he began to laugh. "But you didn’t get much, did you?" he said.
Angelica smiled grimly.
"Now then!" she said. "Let’s have it out! I’ll own up that I don’t want you to tell—that—to any one, and especially to Eddie. It would give me a lot of trouble; but it wouldn’t spoil things. I have two good reasons for not worrying about being found out. In the first place, I’d deny it all, and I’m just as likely to be believed as you. You haven’t got a name for being so awfully truthful, you know. I’d say you were making it up out of spite, because I wouldn’t have you. And then I don’t think you’d run the risk of telling Eddie. You’re too fond of yourself. You know what would happen if he didn’t believe you. He’d kick you out for telling such lies about me; and if he did believe you, he’d never forgive you. You’d never get anything more from him. No; it wouldn’t suit you a bit to get Eddie down on you!"
"So you think you’re going to manage me like a marionette? You think you can make any sort of fool out of me?"
"You’ve made a fool of yourself," she said. She wanted to stop there, but she could not resist the terrible temptation to hurt, in her turn, this man who had hurt her so brutally. She didn’t care if it were vulgar or if it were imprudent; she wanted only to hurt. "You made a regular fool of yourself," she went on. "You acted like a monkey—going down on your knees to me and raving the way you did. Do you remember?"
She was smiling a little—the subtle and cruel shadow of a smile.
"Don’t you think you were a fool? So weak—first in one of your childish rages, and then crying and whining about your sins? And then beginning——”
"Never mind the means I used," he said. "I got what I wanted. I knew how to get you, and I knew how to get rid of you when I was tired of you."
No! It was too unequal a battle; she suffered too much. Every memory of that dead love was too bitter, too shameful, too full of a strange, heart-rending pain. He had all the advantage; she couldn’t wound him as he could wound her. She was mortally stricken; but she wouldn’t give up.