'I could make it possible,' she said jerkily, and her voice died away in a sickening little laugh.
For some moments there was a horrible silence, and then Theo Trist spoke in a strange, thick voice, quite unlike his own.
'Alice,' he said, 'do you ever think of Brenda? Do you ever think of anyone but yourself?'
The words came as a cold and chilling surprise to Mrs. Huston, and she began slowly to realize that she had met with something which was entirely new to her. She had come in contact with a man upon whom the effect of her beauty was of no account. Her powers of fascination seemed suddenly to have left her, and across her mind there flashed a gleam of that unpleasant light by the aid of which we are at times enabled to see ourselves as others see us. It was only natural and womanlike that she should resent the shedding of this light, and visit her resentment, not upon the disclosure made by it, but on the illuminator of the unpleasant scene.
'Oh,' she muttered angrily, 'you are all against me! No one cares for me; no one makes allowances.'
Trist smiled in a slow, strong way which was infinitely pathetic.
'No,' he said, 'no one makes allowances; you must never expect that.'
Then Mrs. Huston's tears began to flow again, and the self-contained man opposite to her sat with white bloodless lips and contracted eyes staring into the blackness of the night.