“Pardon me, madame,” he said, “some time ago I found it was necessary for my honor to learn what I could about your past—and—your present. A little late, no doubt, but what will you? We Russians are hard to rouse, but still harder to deceive twice over. Long before you knew me Neville Moray was your lover—he has continued to be so ever since. How far your—affection carried you before our marriage I do not know—but since then you have seen him at regular intervals, secretly, shamefully, and now”—his voice broke suddenly in a horrible way—“now I am forced to doubt the legitimacy of your son.”
From the long gallery beyond her apartments gay, childish shouts came ringing to their ears.
“Hop! Hop, Garrassime! Kick out your heels, horsey! Go faster! Go faster!” Piotr was calling out at the top of his voice, and in the small, heavily perfumed salon there was silence, tense and terrible, an oppressive lull in a storm. There was a burst of laughter, and the galloping of little feet pursuing Garrassime, the merry jingle of the silver bells, of the bridle with which the boy was driving his human steed, and then silence again.
Laurence had fallen forward against the cushions, her face hidden, both hands covering her ears. Basil drew a deep breath, and suddenly tears rose to his eyes. Slowly he walked to a window, and, his back toward her, gazed unseeingly at the immense steppe rolling out from the rocks far below. The magnificent isolation of the place was almost tragic in its completeness, and from that height the vast wrinklings of the unspotted snow-field seemed wrought from imperishable marble by the craft of some giant sculptor, enamoured of Eternity.
“Hear me, Basil!” murmured Laurence, hoarsely. “What you say is monstrous—false to the core. The boy is yours—yours, do you hear me?” There was the ring of truth in her words now, but the man who listened had ceased to believe once and for all. A bad woman may inspire passion, but not the love that trusts and comprehends.
“How can I know?” came from the window, in a voice so altered that she did not recognize it, and abruptly started forward to see who had spoken. “How can I know,” went on the lifeless, monotonous accusation, “since you were always untrue? Had you, tired of my tenderness, yielded to a sudden impulse and given yourself to another, you might yet have had some shadow of an excuse, perhaps. You would have merely sunk, in so doing, to the level of those women who break faith because it is their whim or their nature to do so. But what of the crime committed by a free agent in accepting another man’s name, his love and trust, when it has become no longer possible to do so without black dishonor? You were talking a while ago of your poltroonery with regard to my peasants—my people here. What is that compared to the atrocious cowardice you were guilty of when you greedily accepted me as your husband—your best friend, your protector—knowing that you were no longer yours to dispose of, for a fortune or otherwise?”
“You are cruel—unfair, and you know it! There has been nothing, nothing, I tell you, that was serious between me and the—the—young man you named just now. He was a childhood’s friend, nothing more.”
Basil did not turn, he shrugged his shoulders wearily, that was all; and Laurence, cowed, daunted by this contemptuous silence, glanced apprehensively at those broad shoulders in a quick, haunted way.
“Oh,” she cried, “won’t you look round? Won’t you read the truth in my eyes? Take care, Basil, of what you are doing! Don’t push me too far!” The sentence that had begun in entreaty ended in a snarl of weak rage and menace that made Basil pivot on his heels and look at her with new surprise.
“I believe, God forgive me, that you are attempting to threaten me!” he said, holding back his anger with a strong effort.