“Basil! My Basil!” she moaned. “I am yours, only yours!” One part of her brain was working feverishly, for she must try to guess—and that quickly—what he knew, what had changed him so; the other part was inert and dazed. It was a crucial moment.
Firmly he detached her clinging hands from his shoulders, and, holding her by both slender wrists, he pressed her gently toward the lounge; but her hitherto dormant fighting powers were fully aroused now, and she struggled free, to fling herself in utter abasement at his feet, clasping his knees desperately. An expression of indescribable pain contracted his features, but she did not see that; all she knew was that he lifted her up ever so gently, as though she were a mere object to be removed from his path, and placed her in the same impersonal way where she had sat before.
Limitless astonishment mingled now with her terror and confusion. Was this the man whom she had led by the proverbial silken thread?
“Don’t you realize,” he was saying, “that you can no longer influence me; that I clearly see through the tricks and shams you have always practised upon me; that my eyes are wide open at last?”
Gripping the edge of the lounge with both hands, she stared at him in utter consternation, helpless, defeated, robbed at one stroke of all her weapons.
“Women,” he pursued in that well-controlled, level tone that gave her such a sense of powerlessness, “hold different views of honor from what we do. I had never quite believed this, because our women are apart from the common herd, but you have convinced me. You are alarmed at the thought—not of losing me, but what I represent to you, and you are at the present minute perfectly willing to surrender unconditionally, even after what I have just told you, were I cowardly enough to accept such a surrender. You think that my anger will pass; but you may as well know that this is not going to be the case, because you have robbed me not only of the present, but of the past—because you have never been faithful to me, even when you first put your hand in mine and swore to be true, and because now I do not believe in you and never will!”
“But what makes you say these hideous things?” she gasped. “What have I done to deserve such cruelty—such contempt—such injustice?”
There was still something wanting in his accusation—she felt it instinctively; something she dreaded to hear him tell, and yet must know; something he, a gentleman, hated to say.
“The knowledge that you have always betrayed me,” he said at last; “you who married me for gain, because your lover was too poor to be a welcome husband!”
“My lover!” she shrieked. “That is false! I have no lover!”