“Well, Zai?”
Zai has been standing at the window perfectly motionless for half an hour, her slight figure almost rigid, her head a little thrown back, her face white as marble and almost as impassive, her two little hands clasped behind her as in a vice, and Gabrielle thinks it high time to recall her to a sense of everyday life with all its ills.
“Well, Gabrielle!”
The girl turns and faces her step-sister; her eyes look as if she were stunned, but her lips smile.
Gabrielle stares at her for a moment, then she bends over her volume again.
“There, child, don’t act with only me for an audience!” she says quietly, “You have had enough of acting and actors, goodness knows. What a brute the man has been!”
“Why?” Zai asks defiantly.
“Why?—because he pretended to love you, and he knew you loved him, and yet he has quietly bowled you over for that doll of a thing.”
“He cannot help himself, Gabrielle!”
“Why cannot he help himself, pray?”