"And five years ago you were in love with him, eh?" "How dare you say that to me!" she answered. "I never was. I always hated him."
She told her lie with unscrupulous directness. He did not believe her; but what did that matter! It was no reason why he should put her at a disadvantage, and, strangely enough, he did not feel any contempt for her because she told the lie, nor because she had once cared for Castine. Probably in those days she had never known anybody who was very much superior to Castine. She was in love with himself now; that was enough, or nearly enough, and there was no particular reason why he should demand more from her than she demanded from him. She was lying to him now because—well, because she loved him. Like the majority of men, when women who love them have lied to them so, they have seen in it a compliment as strong as the act was weak. It was more to him now that this girl should love him than that she should be upright, or moral, or truthful. Such is the egotism and vanity of such men.
"Well, he owes me several years of life. I put in a bad hour that night."
He knew that "several years of life" was a misstatement; but, then, they were both sinners.
Her eyes flashed, she stamped her foot, and her fingers clinched.
"I wish I'd killed him when I killed his bear!" she said.
Then excitedly she described the scene exactly as it occurred. He admired the dramatic force of it. He thrilled at the direct simplicity of the tale. He saw Vanne Castine in the forearms of the huge beast, with his eyes bulging from his head, his face becoming black, and he saw blind justice in that death grip; Christine's pistol at the bear's head, and the shoulder in the teeth of the beast, and then!
"By the Lord Harry," he said, as she stood panting, with her hands fixed in the last little dramatic gesture, "what a little spitfire and brick you are!"
All at once he caught her away from the open window and drew her to him. Whether what he said that moment, and what he did then, would have been said and done if it were not for the liqueur he had drunk at Sophie's house would be hard to tell; but the sum of it was that she was his and he was hers. She was to be his until the end of all, no matter what the end might be. She looked up at him, her face glowing, her bosom beating —beating, every pulse in her tingling.
"You mean that you love me, and that—that you want-to marry me?" she said; and then, with a fervent impulse, she threw her arms round his neck and kissed him again and again.