"You need not throw my origin in my teeth, Commandatore," she replied. "I am sufficiently conscious of it, and as for gratitude—well, I often think I should have been far better off in the slums from which you picked me. I should have been happy enough. The precious education you have given me has only enabled me to realise my own impossibility. You have given me knowledge, and with it the capacity for suffering."
"Like your mother Eve," responded Hora quietly, "you longed for the apple and blame the serpent."
"Eve was no child, and I was a child when you gave me the apple," she answered more quietly.
"That is true," replied Hora. "Possibly I did wrongly. I should have left you to bloom in your own soil. You would have been overblown by this time, Myra—some drunken ruffian's doxy—taking your weekly beating without a whimper and seeing heaven in a quartern of gin."
"Better that—better that—than——" She paused.
"Well?" asked Hora. She muttered something sullenly, but in so low a tone that the words did not reach his ears.
He continued, "You were asking me why I think it well that Guy should have a home of his own. I have given you my reasons. I really should have thought you were intelligent enough to realise their force."
"I don't believe in them," she flashed out. "Oh, I know you better than that, Commandatore. I know your subtle methods. You have some other end in view. What it is I know not, but I am sure it means danger to Guy." She had been moving restlessly backwards and forwards, but now she paused and faced Hora. "I tell you, Commandatore, that if anything happens to Guy you shall not escape. I swear it."
Despite his apparent unconcern Hora was impressed by the latent passion in her tone. Almost he regretted that he had not left the beautiful flower to be choked by the weeds from which he had plucked it. But he remembered that he had one means of controlling Myra which would necessarily prove effective. He rose from the chair where he had been sitting. "If anything happens to Guy, I don't suppose I shall care much what happens to myself," he replied gravely. "Is he not my son?"
"Your son?" replied Myra. "I doubt it, Commandatore. No father would ever have brought up a son as you have brought up Guy. Besides, there is nothing of you in him. I know you both. There's not a feature alike, and the difference between your thoughts and actions and his is just as strongly marked."