I went languidly to work. I did not feel the slightest interest to know whether or not Sara Lorrence had taken advantage of the decoying of Paul Dabney and had made an investigation of the Russian book-shelves. I felt utterly wretched and drained of life, and of the desire to live.
When at last Paul Dabney's footstep came along the hall, and, somewhat hesitatingly, in at the door, I did not turn my head. He stopped at sight of me, and stood still. I could feel that his eyes were on me, and I struggled against a nervous curiosity to see the expression of his look. But I would not yield. I kept on doggedly, taking down a volume, dusting it, clapping its leaves together, putting it back and making a note of its title and author in the book that Mrs. Brane had given me for the purpose. My face burned, my finger-tips turned to ice. Anger, disgust, shame, seemed to have taken the place of the blood along my veins. At last, “You are not as affable a companion by day as you are by night,” drawled the young man, and came strolling a step nearer to me across the floor.
“I know you made me promise,” he went on, “not to speak of any moonlight madness by the common light of day, but, strangely enough, your spell does n't hold. I feel quite able to break my word to you now.”
He paused. I wondered if he could feel the tumult of my helpless rage. “I have been very much afraid of you,” he said, “but that is changed. No man can be afraid of the serpent he has fondled, even when he knows that its fang is as poisonous as sin. I am not afraid of you at all.”
The book slid to the floor. My head seemed to bend of its own weight to meet my hands. A great strangling burst of laughter tore my throat, pealed from my lips, filled the room. I laughed like a maniac. I rocked with laughter. Then, staggering to my feet, I went over to the window bench, and sat there sobbing and crying as though my heart must break.
Paul Dabney shut the door, swore, paced the room, at last came over to me and bade me, roughly, to “stop my noise.”
“Don't make a fool of yourself,” he said coldly. “You won't make one of me, I assure you.”
At that I looked up at him through a veil of tears, showing him a face that must have been as simple as an angry child's.
“Look at me, Paul Dabney,” I gasped. “Look hard—as hard as you looked yesterday afternoon down there near the swamp after I had saved your life. And, when you have looked, tell me what you know about me—me—me—Janice Gale.”
He caught me by the hands and looked. My tears, falling, left my vision clear, and his face showed so haunted and haggard and spent, so wronged, that with a welcome rush, tenderness and pity and understanding came back for a moment to my heart. I realized, for just that moment, what he must be suffering from this dreadful tangle in which he had been caught. How could he know me for what I really was when that demon came to him with my face and voice and hands and eyes? And yet—the moment passed and left me hard again—I felt that he ought to have known. Some glimmer of the truth should have come to him. In fact, after a moment he dropped my hands and put his own over his eyes. He went over to the window and stood there, staring out, unseeing, I was sure. His shoulders sagged, his whole slight, energetic body drooped. I saw his fist shut and open at his side. After a long time, he turned and came slowly back to stand before me.