"I wonder what's become of him," she said presently. "He hasn't dunned me for months. Has he found some other poor wretch to bleed? Must have, I imagine, for he always declared he was on the edge of starvation. Supposing that was true, though—supposing he has starved?"
Her thought sank away into a wordless reverie of the dreariest description. Suddenly she roused herself, clenching her hands in her lap.
"Well, supposing he has, what does it matter to me? If ever a man deserved to starve, he did, vain, lazy, cowardly, self-seeking jackal of a fellow. Why in the name of reason should I trouble about him—specially to-night? But then why, whenever I am a bit done, does the remembrance of him always come back?"
Poppy yawned again, staring blankly at the persons on the stage, hearing the sound of their speech but knowing only the sense of her own thought.
"Why? Because it's like him, because it's altogether in the part. He was always on the watch for his opportunity; wheedling or blackguarding, directly he saw one had no fight left in one, till he got his own way."
She leaned forward, resting her hands on the velvet cushion.
"I am confoundedly tired," she said. "All the same, it's rather horrible. If the thing came over again, which mercifully it can't, I should do precisely the same as I did. And yet I'm never quite sure which of us was really in the right. And, therefore, I suppose just as long as I live, whenever I'm dished—as I am to-night—I shall work the whole hateful business through again, and the remembrance of him will always come back."
She pushed the soft heavy masses of hair up from her forehead with both hands.
"In the main it was your own fault, de Courcy Smyth, and you know that it was. Most women would not have held out nearly as long as I did. So lie quiet. Let me be. Starve, if you've got as far on the downgrade as that. What do I care? I owe you nothing. You never gave me a child. So starve, if you must—yes, starve," she said.
Then she gathered herself back into her stall. Her expression changed.