He could not face her amazement; he stared at the yellow globe of the lamp till his eyes smarted.
"It no doubt seems despicable to you," he went on, "but I can't help it. I hate him for the way he was able to absorb you. He's my worst enemy, for he has made it impossible for you—the woman I love—to love me wholly in return.—Of course, you can't—you WON'T understand. You're only aghast at what you think my littleness. Of all I've gone through, you know nothing, and don't want to know. But with him, it was different; you had no difficulty in understanding him. He had the power over you. Look!—at this very moment, you are siding, not with me, but with him. All my struggling and striving counts for nothing.—Oh, if I could only understand you!" He moved to and fro in his agitation. "Why is a woman so impossible? Does nothing matter to her but tangible success? Do care and consideration carry no weight? Even matched against the blackguardly egoism of what you call genius?—Or will you tell me that he considered you? Didn't he treat you from beginning to end like the scoundrel he was?"
She raised hostile eyes. "You have no right to say that," she said in a small, icy voice, which seemed to put him at an infinite distance from her. "You are not able to judge him. You didn't know him as ... as I did."
With the last words a deeper note came into her voice, and this was all Maurice heard. A frenzied fear seized him.
"Louise!" he cried violently. "You care for him still!"
She started, and raised her arms, as if to ward off a blow. "I don't ... I don't ... God knows I don't! I hate him—you know I do!" She had clapped both hands to her face, and held them there. When she looked up again, she was able to speak as quietly as before. "But do you want to make me hate you, too? Do you think it gives me a higher opinion of you, to hear you talk like that about some one I once cared for? How can I find it anything but ungenerous?—Yes, you are right, he WAS different—in every way. He didn't know what it meant to be envious of anyone. He was as different from you as day from night."
Maurice was hurt to the quick. "Now I know your real opinion of me! Till now you have been considerate enough to hide it. But to-night I have heard it from your own lips. You despise me!"
"Well, you drove me to say it," she burst out, wounded in her turn. "I should never have said it of my own accord—never! Oh, how ungenerous you are! It's not the first time you've goaded me into saying something, and then turned round on me for it. You seem to enjoy finding out things you can feel hurt by.—But have I ever complained? Did I not take you just as you were, and love you—yes, love you! I knew you couldn't be different—that it wasn't your fault if you were faint-hearted and ... and—But you?—what do you do? You talk as if you worship the ground I walk on: but you can't let me alone. You are always trying to change me—to make me what you think I ought to be."
Her words came in haste, stumbling one over the other, as it became plain to her how deeply this grievance, expressed now for the first time, had eaten into her soul. "You've never said to yourself, she's what she is because it's her nature to be. You want to remake my nature and correct it. You are always believing something is wrong. You knew very well, long ago, that the best part of me had belonged to some one else. You swore it didn't matter. But to-night, because there's absolutely nothing else you can cavil at, you drag it up again—in spite of your promises. I have always been frank with you. Do you thank me for it? No, it's been my old fault of giving everything, when it would have been wiser to keep something back, or at least to pretend to. I might have taken a lesson from you, in parsimonious reserve. For there's a part of you, you couldn't give away—not if you lived with a person for a hundred years."
Of all she said, the last words stung him most.