"You tell me—I'll believe or not, as I see fit. Out with it!"
She once more checked the hysterical sobs that threatened her.
"You—you had once loved mother," she said slowly. "You knew that she preferred another man. I am like her. You saw me; it brought back to you that bygone love. I supposed that you were attracted."
She paused.
"But what of yourself? Your own feeling in the matter? I want to get at that."
"It was only a question of me," she muttered, "and it was giving myself up for them. I—you see, I could do nothing." In spite of her control sobs began to shake her voice. "It was hopeless; we were at the end——" She broke off to summon fresh nerve. He stood immovable, holding her, compelling her, as it were, to continue.
"The end of your resources?"
She nodded. "And nearly the end of my strength too. I was afraid that, if I took a place anywhere, my health would give way. I was afraid—a coward!" Suddenly her own emotion gave her words and steadied her voice. "I ought to have gone on—just died, and trusted God to care for them! But, oh, you have never known—never thought of what it means—to have the ones you love, your own, your darlings—destitute, and to know that you—can't go on much longer.... As for you"—she looked him squarely in the eyes, her own full of scorn—"how could I have guessed that a man like you could be? A man who could find pleasure in bullying, browbeating the helpless girl he had sworn to love?"
"Ha!" he said, "so you break out at last, do you? How dare you speak to me like that? I shall punish you for it. You haven't read that letter yet. Give it me."
She held Pansy's as yet unread epistle crushed in her left hand. Without reflecting, she snatched it to her breast, covering it with her other hand. In a whirlwind of some blind fury which he could not analyse he took it from her, using force to unclasp her fingers.