"Do you know," she demanded, "what you represent to us—to me and to my husband—as you sit there?"
Emily shook her head. The movement of disclaimer was easier than speech. She felt a sort of exhaustion.
"I don't believe you do," said Hester. "You don't seem to realise anything. Perhaps it's because you are so innocent, perhaps it's because you are so foolish. You represent the thing that we have the right to hate most on earth."
"Do you hate me?" asked Emily, trying to adjust herself mentally to the mad extraordinariness of the situation, and at the same time scarcely understanding why she asked her question.
"Sometimes I do. When I do not I wonder at myself." The girl paused a second, looked down, as if questioningly, at the carpet, and then, lifting her eyes again, went on in a dragging, half bewildered voice: "When I do not, I actually believe it is because we are both—women together. Before, it was different."
The look which Walderhurst had compared to "that of some nice animal in the Zoo" came into Emily's eyes as two honest drops fell from them.
"Would you hurt me?" she faltered. "Could you let other people hurt me?"
Hester leaned further forward in her chair, widening upon her such hysterically insistent, terrible young eyes as made her shudder.
"Don't you see?" she cried. "Can't you see? But for you my son would be what Walderhurst is—my son, not yours."
"I understand," said Emily. "I understand."