“He will tell you soon enough. Then you will despise me even more than I despise myself. He—he looked at me with his mother's eyes when I kept on striking blows at his very soul. Her eyes—eyes that were always pleading with me! But, curse them—always scoffing at me! For a moment I faltered. There was a wave of love—yes, love, not pity, for him—as I saw him go down before the words I hurled at him. It was as if I had hurt the only thing in all the world that I love. Then it passed. He was not meant for me to love. He was born for me to despise. He was born to torture me as I have tortured him.”
“You poor fool!” she cried, her eyes glittering.
“Sometimes I have doubted my own reason,” he went on, as if he had not heard her scathing remark. “Sometimes I have felt a queer gripping of the heart when I was harshest toward him. Sometimes, his eyes—her eyes—have melted the steel that was driven into my heart long ago, his voice and the touch of his hand have gently checked my bitterest thoughts. Are you listening?”
“Yes.”
“You ask what I have done to him. It is nothing in comparison to what he would have done to me. It isn't necessary to explain. You know the thing he has had in his heart to do. I have known it from the beginning. It is the treacherous heart of his mother that propels that boy's blood along its craven way. She was an evil thing—as evil as God ever put life into.”
“Go on.”
“I loved her as no woman was ever loved before—or since. I thought she loved me; I believe she did. He—Frederic had her portrait up there to flash in my face. She was beautiful; she was as lovely as—but no more! I was not the man. She loved another. You may have guessed, as others have guessed, that she betrayed me. Her lover was that boy's father.”
Dead silence reigned in the room, save for the heavy breathing of the man. Yvonne was as still as death itself. Her hands were clenched against her breast.
“That was years ago,” resumed the man hoarsely.
“You—you told him this?” she cried, aghast.