Even he was astonished at her violence—her insolence. The demon in her had never been so plain, the woman never so effaced. His heart dropped within him like lead, and his whole being shrank from her.
'Listen to me!' he said, seizing her strongly by the hand, while a light of wrath leapt into his changed and bloodshot eyes. 'This man will desert you; in a year's time he will have tired of you; what'll you do then?'
'Manage for myself, thank you! without any canting interference from you. I have had enough of that.'
'And fall again,' he said, releasing her, and speaking with a deliberate intensity; 'fall again—from infamy to infamy!'
She sprang up.
'Mind yourself!' she cried.
Miserable moment! As he looked at her he felt that that weapon of his old influence with her which, poor as it was, he had relied on in the last resort all his life, had broken in his hand. His own act had robbed it of all virtue. That pang of 'irreparableness' which had smitten Elise smote him now. All was undone—all was done!
He buried his face in his hands an instant. When he lifted it again, she was standing with her arms folded across her chest, leaning against an iron shaft which supported part of the roof.
'You had better go!' she said, still in a white heat. 'Why you ever came I don't know. If you won't give me that money, I shall get it somehow.'
Suddenly, as she spoke, everything—the situation, the subject of their talk, the past—seemed to be wiped out of David's brain. He stared round him helplessly. Why were they there—what had happened?