'I read you in the first glance, one glance was enough, your eyes tell the tale of your cunning, mean little soul. Perhaps you sometimes try to resist, maybe your nature turns naturally to evil. There are people like that.'
'If I had done what you seem to think I ought to have done, he would have abandoned you.' And Mildred looked at her rival triumphantly.
'That would have been better than what has happened. Then there would have been only one heart broken, now there are two.'
Mildred hated the woman for the humiliation she was imposing upon her, but in her heart she could not but feel admiration for such single heartedness. Noticing on Mildred's face the change of expression, but misinterpreting it, Ellen said:
'I can read you through and through. You have wrecked two lives. Oh, that any one should be so wicked, that any one should delight in wickedness. I cannot understand.'
'You are accusing me wrongly…. But let me go. It is not likely that we shall arrive at any understanding.'
'Go then, you came to gloat; you have gloated, go.
Ellen threw herself on a chair by the bedside. Her head fell on her hands. Mildred whisked her black crape dress out of the studio.
XIII.
It was not until the spring was far advanced that the nostalgia of the boulevards began to creep into her life. Then, without intermission, the desire to get away grew more persistent, at last she could think of nothing else. Harold oppressed her. But Mrs. Fargus was not in France, she could not live alone. But why could she not live alone?