"Take it!" he echoed. "I could sooner kill a man out yonder and rob him. Can you not understand? Greater shame could never come to me. You do not know what you would do. There may be beasts that fall as low, no doubt, but they are curs too base for hanging. Have I frightened you? I did not mean to frighten you. You mean well and nobly, no doubt—no doubt. You do not know what you would do. Gifts of gold from man to man are bitter, and sap the strength of the receiver; but from woman to man they are—to the man shameful. Can you not understand?"
Her face burned duskily; she moved with a troubled, confused effort to get away from his gaze.
"No," she said in her shut teeth. "I do not know what you mean. Flamma takes all the gold I make. Why not you, if it be gold that is honest?"
"Flamma is your grandsire—your keeper—your master. He has a right to do as he chooses. He gives you food and shelter, and in return he takes the gains of your labor. But I,—what have I ever given you? I am a stranger to you, and should have no claim on you, if I could be base enough to seek one. I am hideously poor. I make no disguise with you,—you know too well how I live. But can you not see?—if I were mean enough to take the worth of a crust from you, I should be no more worthy of the very name of man. It is for the man to give to the woman. You see?"
She heard him in silence, her face still dark with the confused pain on it of one who has fallen or been struck upon the head, and half forgets and half remembers.
"I do not see," she muttered. "Whoever has, gives: what does it matter? The folly in me was its littleness: it could not be of use. But it was all I had."
"Little or great,—the riches of empires, or a beggar's dole,—there could be no difference in the infamy to me. Have I seemed to you a creature so vile or weak that you could have a title to put such shame upon me?"
Out of the bitter passion of his soul, words more cruel than he had consciousness of rose to his lips and leaped to speech, and stung her as scorpions sting.
She said nothing; her teeth clinched, her face changed as it had used to do when Flamma had beaten her.
She said nothing, but turned away; and with one twist of her hand she flung the pieces through the open casement into the river that flowed below.