"Made you suffer, have I?" answered Hora scornfully. "You don't know what suffering is. The vapourings of a love-sick girl. Bah! I have no patience with such sentimental bleatings."
Myra rose from her chair, pale now with anger, "And now you insult me," she cried.
He would have interrupted her, but she overpowered his words with a torrent of her own. "Oh, you have the right to insult me as you please; I don't question it. Did you not buy me, as you have told me often enough, body and soul for a piece of gold and a bottle of gin. The master cannot insult the slave, you will say. I suppose I ought to smile at your reproaches, but when you accuse me of having driven Guy away—it is too much, Commandatore. I cannot bear that accusation, at least."
She dropped limply into the chair from which she had risen. Her face fell forward into her hands, and her whole body was shaken with a storm of sobs.
Hora was silent. He had provoked the storm. He waited for its subsidence before he broached the subject he had in his mind. Presently tears came to Myra's relief, the crystal drops broke through her fingers. She lay back in the chair exhausted by the cyclone of passion.
"I have something yet to say, Myra," remarked Hora quietly. "I believe you when you say that you have done nothing to drive Guy away, but that belief makes it necessary to look for another explanation. Guy is of the age when there is only one possible explanation. He is blind to your beauty, Myra; have you any idea as to any other woman who is likely to have attracted him?"
There was a subtle meaning in Hora's voice which arrested Myra's wandering attention. She looked up. Tears had reddened her eyes, a hardness came into her face. She was almost ugly. She crushed her handkerchief into a ball.
"What do you mean, Commandatore?" she asked. Then, as she met Hora's eyes, she bent forward to him, "You know something, you know something." She forced the words from between clenched teeth.
Hora made no answer, and she continued, "You need not trouble about breaking it gently, Commandatore. Who is it?"
The Commandatore was unmoved by her emotion.