She paused suggestively. The imputation that he of all men had the least right to resent denial; that, dishonest still, he was willing to justify her privately though not publicly; that repentance should have been open to the world—it all stung him.
He threw out his hands in a gesture of protest. “As many witnesses as you will, but not now, not this hour, after all these years. Will you not at least listen to me, and then judge and act? Will you not hear me, Guida?”
She had not yet even stirred. Now that it had come, this scene was all so different from what she might have imagined. But she spoke out of a merciless understanding, an unchangeable honesty. Her words came clear and pitiless:
“If you will speak to the point and without a useless emotion, I will try to listen. Common kindness should have prevented this intrusion—by you!”
Every word she said was like a whip-lash across his face. A devilish light leapt into his eye, but it faded as quickly as it came.
“After to-night, to the public what you will,” he repeated with dogged persistence, “but it was right we should speak alone to each other at least this once before the open end. I did you wrong, yet I did not mean to ruin your life, and you should know that. I ought not to have married you secretly; I acknowledge that. But I loved you—”
She shook her head, and with a smile of pitying disdain—he could so little see the real truth, his real misdemeanour—she said: “Oh no, never—never! You were not capable of love; you never knew what it means. From the first you were too untrue ever to love a woman. There was a great fire of emotion, you saw shadows on the wall, and you fell in love with them. That was all.”
“I tell you that I loved you,” he answered with passionate energy. “But as you will. Let it be that it was not real love: at least it was all there was in me to give. I never meant to desert you. I never meant to disavow our marriage. I denied you, you will say. I did. In the light of what came after, it was dishonourable—I grant that; but I did it at a crisis and for the fulfilment of a great ambition—and as much for you as for me.”
“That was the least of your evil work. But how little you know what true people think or feel!” she answered with a kind of pain in her voice, for she felt that such a nature could never even realise its own enormities. Well, since it had gone so far she would speak openly, though it hurt her sense of self-respect.
“For that matter, do you think that I or any good woman would have had place or power, been princess or duchess, at the price? What sort of mind have you?” She looked him straight in the eyes. “Put it in the clear light of right and wrong, it was knavery. You—you talk of not meaning to do me harm. You were never capable of doing me good. It was not in you. From first to last you are untrue. Were it otherwise, were you not from first to last unworthy, would you have—but no, your worst crime need not be judged here. Yet had you one spark of worthiness would you have made a mock marriage—it is no more—with the Comtesse Chantavoine? No matter what I said or what I did in anger, or contempt of you, had you been an honest man you would not have so ruined another life. Marriage, alas! You have wronged the Comtesse worse than you have wronged me. One day I shall be righted, but what can you say or do to right her wrongs?”