She repeated the words after him, with such an ironical emphasis that his unreflected courage curled and shrivelled. He wished the ground had swallowed him up before he had said them. For, as they fell from her lips, the audacity he had been guilty of, and the absurdity that was latent in the words themselves, struck him in the face like pellets of hail.
"Your peace of mind! What has your peace of mind to do with me?" she cried, growing extravagantly angry. "I never saw you in my life till to-day; I may never see you again, and it is all the same to me whether I do or not.—Oh, my own peace of mind, as you call it, is quite hard enough to take care of, without having a stranger's thrown at me! What do you mean by making me responsible for it! I have never done anything to you."
All the foolish castles Maurice had built came tumbling about his cars. He grew pale and did not venture to look at her.
"Make you responsible! Oh, how can you misunderstand me so cruelly!"
His consternation was so palpable that it touched her in spite of herself. Her face had been as naively miserable as a child's, now it softened, and she spoke more kindly.
"Don't mind what I say. To-night I am tired ... have a headache ... anything you like."
A wave of compassion drowned his petty feelings of injury, and his sympathy found vent in a few inadequate words.
"Help me?—you?" She laughed, in an unhappy way. "To help, one must understand, and you couldn't understand though you tried. All you others lead such quiet lives; you know nothing of what goes on in a life like mine. Every day I ask myself why I have not thrown myself out of the window, or over one of the bridges into the river, and put an end to it."
Wrapped up though she was in herself, she could not help smiling at his frank gesture of dismay.
"Don't be afraid," she said, and the smile lingered on her lips. "I shall never do it. I'm too fond of life, and too afraid of death. But at least," she caught herself up again, "you will see how ridiculous it is for you to talk to me of your peace of mind. Peace of mind! I have never even been passably content. Something is always wanting. To-night, for instance, I feel so much energy in me, and I can make nothing of it—nothing! If I were a man, I should walk for hours, bareheaded, through the woods. But to be a woman ... to be cooped up inside four walls ... when the night itself is not large enough to hold it all!——"