“Do you mean”—she stared at him—“that you have not cared—at all—since?” She spoke incredulously. Then, suddenly, she laughed. “And I—what a fool I was!—I used to grieve—often—thinking how you must be suffering!”
He smiled wryly as at some bitter memory.
“Perhaps I did,” he responded shortly. “Death has its pains—even the death of first love. My love for you died hard, Elisabeth—but it died. You killed it.”
“And you will not do what I ask for the sake of the love you—once—gave me?” There was a desperate appeal in her low voice.
He shook his head. “No,” he said, “I will not.”
She made a gesture of despair.
“Then you drive me into doing what I hate to do!” she exclaimed fiercely. She was silent for a moment, standing with bowed head, her mouth working painfully. Then, drawing herself up, she faced him again. There was something in the lithe, swift movement that recalled a panther gathering itself together for its spring.
“Listen!” she said. “If you will not find some means of breaking off your engagement with Sara, then I shall tell her the whole story—tell her what manner of man it is she proposes to make her husband!”
There was a supreme challenge in her tones, and she waited for his answer defiantly—her head flung back, her whole body braced, as it were, to resistance.
In the silence that followed, Trent drew away from her—slowly, repugnantly, as though from something monstrous and unclean.