Isabel stopped where she stood, in blank amazement.
"Do you mean to tell me it was just play-acting—all that moving scene?"
"All's fair in love and war," laughed Fult; "hit wasn't play-acting about the way I loved you; but the rest I reckon was."
Her voice took on a new and stern note as she continued: "In other words, you deliberately deceived me and worked on my sympathy and got my feelings wrought up? Those tears you shed were crocodile tears, those heart-broken words and looks were all just a piece of fine acting?"
"I allowed myself hit was pretty well done," replied Fult, in a self-congratulatory tone.
"And you were entirely satisfied with the result of it?" Her voice now took on an edge.
"I was, too." Again he laughed the low, triumphant laugh.
"You were quite satisfied I loved you? It didn't occur to you that a moment of excitement and distress was not a reliable time to judge a person by?"
"What I saw was enough for me," he said. "I knowed if you loved me even a little, I could learn you to love me better and better."
"But suppose," said Isabel,—and her voice was hard and cold,—"suppose that you should be mistaken. Suppose I could never learn to love a man who deliberately deceives me, and then gloats over it. Suppose I did not love you in the first place and, after that, never could?"