She was standing now, leaning far over the table, for he had shrunk down into his chair.
“The little Thérèse, yes! Now do you begin to see? Now do you begin to realise what I came here to do? Now do you know why I married you? Isn't it clear to you? Well, I have tried to do all these things so that I might break your heart as you broke hers. I came to make you pay!”
She was speaking rapidly, excitedly now. Her voice was high-pitched and unnatural. Her eyes seemed to be driving him deeper and deeper into the chair, forcing him down as though with a giant's hand.
“The little, timid, heart-broken Thérèse who would not speak to you, nor kiss you, nor say goodbye to you when you took her darling sister away from the Bristol in the Kartnerring more than twenty years ago. Ah, how I loved her, how I loved her! And how I hated you for taking her away from me. Shall I ever forget that wedding night? Shall I ever forget the grief, the loneliness, the hatred that dwelt in my poor little heart that night? Everyone was happy, the whole world was happy; but was I? I was crushed with grief. You were taking her away across the awful sea, and you were to make her happy, so they said, aïe, so said my beloved, joyous sister.
“You stood before the altar in St Stephens's with her and promised, promised, promised everything. I heard you. I sat with my mother and turned to ice, but I heard you. All Vienna, all Budapest said that you promised naught but happiness to each other. She was twenty-one. She was lovely; ah, far lovelier than that wretched photograph lying there in front of you. It was made when she was eighteen. She did not write those words on the back of the card. I wrote them, not more than a month ago, before I gave it to Frederic. To this house she came twenty-three years ago. You brought her here the happiest girl in all the world. How did you send her away? How?”
He stirred in the chair. A spasm of pain crossed his face.
“And I was the happiest man in all the world,” he said hoarsely. “You are forgetting one thing, Thérèse.” He fell into the way of calling her Thérèse as if he had known her by no other name. “Your sister was not content to preserve the happiness that———”
“Stop!” she commanded. “You are not to speak evil of her now. You will never think evil of her after what I am about to tell you. You will curse yourself. Somehow I am glad that my plans have gone awry. It gives me the opportunity to see you curse yourself.”
“Her sister!” muttered the man unbelievingly. “I have married the child Thérèse. I have held her sister in my arms all these months and never knew. It is a dream. I———”
“Ah, but you have felt, even though———”