With a movement so sudden as to startle him, she sprang to her feet, standing with her head thrown back, and the moonlight whitening her face.
“No,” she exclaimed passionately, “it is not! Do you know that all your life, and all your love—such as it is!—has hinged only upon what you feel, what you want? You have measured everything, balanced everything, chosen everything by that and that alone. But what of us? I sometimes wonder whether you ever cast one thought at the poor puppets you set up, and whose hearts you demand. You want the flattery of their love; you have it and tire of it. Enough! Toss it on one side, it is over and done with—”
He interrupted her with real amazement. “You can say this—Helen, you? Over! Why am I here to-night?”
“Oh,” she said with scorn, “because I have slipped out of your hold, and have suddenly become valuable. While you believed you had only to raise your finger to bring me back—at Thornbury, for instance—I was nothing, nothing! But now, now that unexpectedly the power seemed slipping from you, you could not endure the loss. It was the same with that girl. Your vanity, your worst self, was piqued by her indifference, her reluctance; you set yourself to win her, and when you had succeeded, she began to weary you. That was why I warned her. You believe, and she believes, that it was jealousy, but you are wrong—both of you. It was pity, profoundest pity, and a wish to spare her something of—what I had felt myself.”
Against her will her voice trembled over these last words, and Fenwick caught the change.
“Say what hard things you like,” he cried triumphantly, “you love me still!”
Her voice, still not quite under control, sounded curiously dull.
“No,” she said. “You are mistaken. I do not.”
“Deny it,” he broke in, with a short laugh, “deny it as you please, it is true. Come, Helen, you have had your say; I don’t know why you have turned yourself into her advocate, but I’m ready to admit I haven’t treated Claudia well. In spite of your hard hitting, can’t you see that it was you who drove me to distraction? Suppose it had been too late.”
“It is,” she said quietly.