“And now what is to become of me?” she wailed.
His heart grew cold.
“You—you will leave him? You will go back to Paris? Yvonne, it will be a blow to him. He has had one fearful slash in the back. This will break him.”
“At least, I may have that consolation,” she cried, straightening up in an effort to revive her waning purpose. “Yes, I shall go. I cannot stay here now. I—” She paused and shuddered.
“What, in Heaven's name, have you against my—against him? What does it all mean? How you must have hated him to———”
“Hated him? Oh, how feeble the word is! Hate! There should be a word that strikes more terror to the soul than that one. But wait! You shall know everything. You shall have the story from the beginning. There is much to tell, and there will be consolation—aye, triumph for you in the story I shall tell. First, let me say this to you: when I came here I did not know that there was a Lydia Desmond. I would have hurt that poor girl; but it would not have been a lasting pain. In my plans, after I came to know her, there grew a beautiful alternative through which she should know great happiness. Oh, I have planned well and carefully, but I was ruthless. I would have crushed her with him rather than to have failed. But it is all a dream that has passed, and I am awake.
“It was the most cruel, but the most magnificent dream—ah, but I dare not think of it. As I stand here before you now, Frederic, I am shorn of all my power. I could not strike him as I might have done a month ago. Even as I was cursing him but a moment ago I realised that I could not have gone on with the game. Even as I begged you to take your revenge, I knew that it was not myself who urged, but the thing that was having its death-struggle within me.”
“Go on. Tell me. Why do you stop?”
She was glancing fearfully toward the Hindu's door. “There is one man in this house who knows. He reads my every thought. He does not know all, but he knows me. He has known from the beginning that I was not to be trusted. That man is never out of my thoughts. I fear him, Frederic—I fear him as I fear death. If he had not been here I—I believe I should have dared anything. I could have taken you away with me months ago. But he worked his spell and I was afraid. I faltered. He knew that I was afraid, for he spoke to me one day of the beautiful serpents in his land that were cowards in spite of the death they could deal with one flash of their fangs. You were intoxicated. I am a thing of beauty. I can charm as the———”
“God knows that is true,” he said hoarsely.