He knelt down on the hearth-rug again, unlocked her fingers, and took them into his own—gently and with a sort of frightened respect for the repulsion in her averted face. His own was flushed and ignobly eager. His agitated breath, tainted with liquor and tobacco, seemed to penetrate her fine dry hair to the scalp. Within, I suppose, was ferment and chaos—blind, confident passion waiting impatiently on a tenderness, felt indeed, but which seemed to perish on his lips in one bald unconvincing speech after another, whose unworthiness he felt as he uttered them. Somewhere inside the animal tegument that his life had thickened and indurated he was groping for his starved, mislaid soul.
"Flash, why don't you speak? Haven't I eaten enough dirt yet? What pleasure can there be in watching a human being grovel? Why don't you say 'Yes'?"
"No—no—no!" she cried, passionately, stamping her foot. "Bryan, don't touch me! I won't have you touch me! I've got a temper. Oh, can't you see I'm not the sort of woman that gives herself twice."
She thrust him away and jumped up, pushing the arm-chair back on its smooth casters. He rose, too, and picked a hair or two carefully from his broad-clothed knees.
"I see," he said, gloomily and comprehensively. "It's a lesson not to judge by faces. Yours has given me the sell of my life—but it's what I've always maintained. The first man—the first man, however great a hound he may be. You never catch him up."
"Think what you like of me," she cried indignantly, "but don't dare suppose evil of him. You can't even imagine him. He's as far above me and you, Bryan, as the stars are above the ground. You've met him, you say. How could you look in his eyes and not be ashamed of all your horrid, wicked knowledge? Oh!" she went on in a softer voice, "I don't despise you, Bryan—truth and honor, I don't. I like you as a friend. I've heard things about you; but I feel that if I was a man and had your chances I mightn't be much better. That's honest, isn't it? You and I are much about the same. We're fond of the world and pleasure and all the good things money buys. What you offer dazzles me in a way—'specially the clothes. Perhaps if I hadn't known him first—but oh, Bryan, I can't—I can't come down after that! You don't know how hard I fought for him. I found him at his work and I tempted him away. I made myself pretty for him. I made all the advances. I'm full of tricks, really. There's things even I couldn't tell. But they don't mean the same to him, Bryan, as they would to us clay people. I don't know what they do mean. I thought I might have in time. Because he was always kind. He saw through me, I think, but my feelings never got hurt. I think I was just a little bird that had come to drink out of his hand, and he wouldn't frighten it away."
"It's a pity Mrs. Hepworth isn't alive," sneered Lumsden. "You and she might compare notes."
"Is she dead?" said Fenella, in a still lower voice. "Poor thing; that's it, then. She was ill and suffering and told him. He couldn't resist those sorts of things—Paul couldn't."
"He must have been an amusing companion."
"Not amusing, Bryan, but, oh! something so much deeper. Don't think I loved a muff. My darling is as strong and brave as he's good. I felt so safe with him. You don't know the terror a girl can feel of a man she isn't sure of. It's like a nightmare where you can't run away. I'd have gone tramping with Paul. I'd have slept under a hedge if he'd had me in his arms. Now, don't you see how impossible it is? I'm tired, Bryan, I must go home. Will you 'phone for a cab?"