“And as though you did not know it—as though you had not turned white when you saw me at the door there, looking at you! If there were no harm, you needn’t have been afraid of me. You’d have smiled instead of getting pale; you’d have held her hand still, instead of dropping it, and you’d have kissed it again, to show me how little it meant. No harm, indeed!”
“Your face was enough to scare any one, sweetheart. I thought you were ill and were going to faint.”
He spoke softly now, in his golden voice, and threw more persuasion into the thin excuse than its words held.
“Don’t—don’t!” she cried. “You’re tearing love to pieces with every word you say—if you know what you’re saying! I tell you I’ve seen, and I know! This is the end—not the beginning. I saw it beginning long ago—last winter, when she sat to you day after day, and I lay in my corner and watched you watching her, and your eyes lighting up, and that smile of yours that was only for me—”
“But I was painting her portrait—I had to look at her—”
“Not like that! Oh, no, not like that! There’s no reason, there never was any reason, why you should look at any woman like that—as you’ve looked at me. What a fool I was to let it go on, to trust myself, to believe that I could be the only woman in the world for you! And then, the other day, when you sang to her before all those people; do you remember what you once promised me? Do you remember at all that you swore to me by all you held sacred that you’d never, never sing, unless I were there to hear you? How you told me that your voice was mine, and only for me, and for no one else, because that at least you could keep for me, though you couldn’t keep your art and make that all mine, too? And then you sang to her—I know, for they told me—you sang my song, the one I loved, from Lohengrin! Why did you do that?”
“Why—I told you the other day—we talked of it, don’t you remember? Why do you go back to it now, dear?”
“Because it’s part of it all,” she cried, passionately. “Because it was only one of so many things that have all led up to this that you’ve done now. I told you how I hated her, the other day, and I made you say that you hated her, too, though you didn’t want to say it. But you did, and you meant it for a little minute—just while it lasted. But you can’t hate her when she’s here—you can’t because you love her, and one can’t hate and love at the same time, though I do—but that’s different. You love her, Walter! You love her—you love her—”
“You’re beside yourself, darling,” said Crowdie, softly. “Don’t talk like this! Be reasonable! Listen to me, sweet!”
He knelt down beside her as she threw herself into a low chair, and he tried to take her hands. But she drew them away, wringing them as though to shake something from her fingers, and turning her face from him, as she clasped the back of the chair on the opposite side.