"He was all I had—all I cared for. And you plotted, and planned, and stole him from me—with your silly baby face."
"It's not true," wept Ephie. "How could I? I didn't know anything about you. He ... he never spoke of you."
Louise laughed. "Oh, I can believe that! And you thought, didn't you, you poor little fool, that he only cared for you? That was why my name was never mentioned. He didn't need to scheme, and contrive, and lie, lie abominably, for fear I should come to hear what he was doing!"
"No, indeed," sobbed Ephie. "Never! And you've no right to say such things of him."
"I no right?" Louise drew herself up. "No right to say what I like of him? Are you going to tell me what I shall say and what I shan't of the man I loved?—yes, and who loved me, too, but in a way you couldn't understand you who think all you have to do is to smile your silly smile, and spoil another person's life. You didn't know, no, of course not!—didn't know this was his room as well as mine. Look, his music is still lying on the piano; that's the chair he sat in, not many days ago; here," she took Ephie by the shoulder and drew her behind the screen, where a small door, papered like the wall, gave, direct from the stair-head, a second entrance to the room—"here's the door he came in at.—For he came as he liked, whenever he chose."
"It's not true; it can't be true," said Ephie, and raised her tear-stained face defiantly. "We are engaged—since the summer. He's coming back to marry me soon."
"He's coming back to marry you!" echoed Louise in a blank voice. "He's coming back to marry you!"
She moved a few steps away, and stood by the writing-table, looking dazed, as if she did not understand. Then she laughed.
Ephie cried with renewed bitterness. "I want to go home."
But Maurice did not pay any attention to her. He was watching Louise, with a growing dismay. For she continued to laugh, in a breathless way, with a catch in the throat, which made the laughter sound like sobbing. On his approaching her, she tried to check herself, but without success. She wiped her lips, and pressed her handkerchief to them, then took the handkerchief between her teeth and bit it. She crossed to the window, and stood with her back to the others; but she could not stop laughing. She went behind the low, broad screen that divided the room, and sat down on the edge of the bed; but still she had to laugh on. She came out again into the other part of the room, and saw Maurice pale and concerned, and Ephie's tears dried through pure fear; but the sight of these two made her laugh more violently than before. She held her face in her hands, and pressed her jaws together as though she would break them; for they shook with a nervous convulsion. Her whole body began to shake, with the efforts she made at repression.