"No. But it's since then that I've read the poems again. You see, you tell the public so much—"
"That you think you have the right to guess the rest?" He paused, then added, with impatience, "Don't guess, Lady Kitty. You have everything that life can give you. Let my secrets alone."
There was silence. Kitty looking round her saw that Madeleine Alcot was entertaining her other guests, and that she and Cliffe were unobserved. Suddenly Cliffe bent towards her, and said, with roughness, his face struggling to conceal the feeling behind it:
"You heard—and you believed—that I tormented her—that I killed her?"
The anguish in his eyes seemed to strike a certain answering fire from Kitty's.
"Yes, but—"
"But what?"
"I didn't think it very strange—"
Cliffe watched her closely.
"—that a man should be—an inhuman beast—if he were jealous—and desperate. You can sympathize with these things?"