"You can't, I say. No woman could. You can't begin to know the humiliation, how it tore me, knowing this fellow walked the earth at all, a nameless spawn, holding my shame over me—over me! threatening every instant to cover me again with it. As if I'd not survived enough! Good God! was I to go through it again, and know that this puling whelp was the instrument—a thing to torture me, hold me up to ridicule, to make men smile and titter and mock me in club corners? Wasn't her insult enough? Must she breed obscene things to echo it?" He groaned and turned away with a gesture of warding off. In the mist of her besetment the woman found herself thinking that the fine little hands in this gesture should have been lace-beruffled at the wrist. He was the figure of stabbed vanity, the bleeding coxcomb. He flung an arm toward the picture with bitter vehemence.
"Ah, my lady! my fine, loose lady, with your high talk and your low way! I hope you've watched me with those painted eyes of yours. Did you think I'd never strike back?"
"But now, Randall—how?" He replenished his glass and turned slowly away from the picture.
"How, indeed? That's where you meet me at last. Not every one could have carried it through, but it was simple for me. Difficult in a way, yes. It's been hard to stomach the fool, with his conceit and his whining. Oh, he fancies himself tremendously, for all his ways of a holy innocent, his damned airs of a sugar-candy Galahad. But I've won him, I tell you, by that very innocence of his. I'm the one soul in the world he truly reveres. His sun rises and sets in me. And now he's where I want him. I've worn out his hope, kept him from doing the thing he wanted to do, kept him on the edge of despair out of respect and fear and love of me. The beggar has a certain devilish sort of genius, but he doesn't know where it lies, and I've taken precious good care he shouldn't find out. Oh, but I've had a rich time of it—disgusting and rich. Nearly a year it is now that he's led me this dance, but I've hooked him beautifully, and to-night I'll pull him in." She had been watching the play of spite on his face, and it was with difficulty that she moistened her lips to say:
"But what will you do to-night—what can you say?"
"Everything I've laid a train for saying, this year past. Tell him how I despise him for his empty pretensions, his constant, wretched failures. Show him to himself as a conceited dawdler and a cheat who has lived on my bounty—oh, I saw to that—a cheat who has defrauded me of time and money and faith in man. Never fear but I'll know the things to say. I've told them to her often enough." He thrust viciously at the portrait. "And you'll hear it all, my Lady Disdain, with your face to the wall to hide its belated blushes."
Again she tried to speak but her lips were dry. At last she achieved a few rather husky words.
"Randall, if you please, might I have a glass of something—water, I'd like."
"To be sure, my child. You're certain you won't join me in a brandy and soda? No? I'll get you something below."
She clutched at the moment to quiet, if she could, that tumult of heart and brain. Her mind dwelt chiefly on Ewing's dejection as she had left him the day before. Teevan came back, bearing a carafe and a bottle of soda water. She drank a glass of the water greedily, and murmured her thanks as he gave her more. It refreshed her and she seemed to feel a renewal of strength. Her fever was heating her brain to wild activity. She felt a crazy desire to cool her head, to lean it against snow or cold metal. She thought fleetingly of cold things she had touched, of marble, icicles, a brass rail with frost on it. She was goading her mind for a way to reach Teevan. She drank the second glass of water, and again he refilled it, protesting against so poor a tipple as he took more brandy for himself.