Basil gulped down something in his throat—possibly the pungence of those flaring lilies—his arm fell limply to his side, and he stared at her in amazement. “You will make a mistake,” he said, slowly, “if you try to go on hoodwinking me. It was well enough in the past, but that sort of thing is done with.”
“What do you mean?” she asked, flushing crimson. “What do you mean? When have I tried to hoodwink you?”
“For more than five long persevering years. No, don’t interrupt me; wait till I have pointed out a few things to you.”
The soft laces about her neck seemed of a sudden to have been transformed into an implacable garotte, and she tore at them with shaking fingers. She was ashy pale now, even to her stiffening lips. He need not have forbidden her to speak, for she could not have done so had she tried.
“For over five long weary years,” he quietly resumed, “you have made of me a mere purveyor of luxuries, of pleasures, of amusements. I fully admire your cleverness in raising yourself to the position I gave you; but not, however, the self-sufficiency that caused you to neglect the obligations that position entails. You scarcely showed shrewdness in this respect, but I was ready after a few weeks of your company to take much for granted, to pardon much, and to adopt any modus-vivendi which would make it easier for you and me to keep up the farce of what I, at least, in my imbecility had thought to be a love marriage. I saw your failings; I discovered, one by one, faults I had never believed you capable of, but I thought you at least honest, and so I managed to endure the disappointment of finding in you nothing of what I had expected. I never doubted your honesty, mind you—never once. That saved all!”
He paused, bit his under lip, and went on in the same slow, deliberate way: “I discovered, to my extreme sorrow, that you did not love me as you claimed you did. It was a bitter pill for me to swallow; but even then I found excuses for you. The temptation of great wealth and—permit me to add in simple justice—of a state almost unequaled here or elsewhere. You were young, well-born, and poor. This is not a—taunt, far from it—but a straight and plain statement. Your beauty entitled you to the best that this earth can provide, and, meeting me on your road, you intentionally dazzled me, using, perhaps, not the most delicate of means to do so; but I was too blind then to discriminate—my fault entirely! I confess that I was to blame for not having been more keen-sighted, and even to-day I rest that blame upon myself.”
He turned his gaze away from the wild stare of her eyes, and at once she tottered to her feet. “Basil!” she cried. “Basil, I love you; you know I love you and have always loved you!” And, so queerly are women constructed, that at that moment when she was being shown in one flash how completely she had lost him, she felt with a keen pang how far above other men he towered, how fine and strong he really was, and what a lover he might have remained, but for her own wilful folly.
He did not move, he quietly continued bending his grave eyes upon her, scanning from head to foot this beautiful creature offering herself in a flash of awakening passion; her light draperies clinging to her like foam about Aphrodite, her glorious eyes wet with tears more genuine than had ever glistened there, her white arms yearningly stretched out to him.
“What a pity,” he said, simply, “that you should not have thought of all this before!”
She half fell back as if he had struck her, then, impelled by a swift instinct to do all that she could to save herself, she suddenly flung herself at him, her head upon his breast, her loose-piled hair, shaken from its fastening ribbon by the violence of the action, tumbling like a mantle in lustrous ripples all around her.