“Wouldn’t it be easier to tell me what you know?” The chilling tone of the words startled him, as might a sudden contact of warm flesh with ice, before his bewildered brain had grasped their meaning. Then, like the crimson, all-pervading outburst of a conflagration, the thing dawned upon him, and his thoughts seemed blood-red in its hideous light. He pushed her from him fiercely, returning her piteous look of fright with a glare, and biting his tongue for words that should be great enough to fairly overwhelm her. As she cowered, he strode toward her: “You thought I did it!” he shouted at her.
Her only answer was to bury her face in her hands, and sink weakly at his knees.
He stood relentlessly glowering down upon her. The bitter, brutal words that might be heaped upon her, nay, that ought to be, crowded upon his tongue. It was too great a task to restrain them, to keep silence.
“You thought I did it,” he repeated. “And you didn’t object—you didn’t shrink from me! Why, I remember—my God!—you kissed my hand! You said: ‘it was done for me! ’ Oh-h!”
The woman at his feet, her face hidden, had been sobbing violently. She lifted her eyes now, and strove appealingly to conquer him with their power. She rose, unaided, to her feet, and confronted him. Terror and tenderness visibly struggled for the mastery of her facial expression, as for the mood behind it.
“Don’t, Seth, don’t! Can’t you see how I am suffering? Have you no pity? How can you have the heart to speak to me like this?”
“You talk about pity—about hearts!”
“How long ago was it that they were on your tongue—that you had your arms stretched open for me?”
“Don’t recall it!”
“If I were to die this day, this hour, it would be the one thing I should want to remember, the one thing of my life that I should hug to my heart. What is changed since then? A man dead?—a man dies every minute of the day somewhere in the world! Suppose I was wrong! Suppose it was an accident—yes, we’ll say it was! Don’t you see—how little that is, how unimportant, compared with—with——”