'I have never deceived you.'
She gave a gesture of deprecation, slight but full of unuttered disdain.
'Long ago I told you that if you had strength enough in you to tell me when you were weak, I should not be like other women; I should understand: to understand is always to forgive; a greater woman than I am has said it. If you had come to me frankly, with no subterfuge, no pretext, no empty phrases of untrue sentiments, but had said honestly that you were no better than other men, I should have told you that follies of that sort need never disturb our friendship nor our confidence, but——'
'But, my God, what had I to confess?' cried Othmar, with that passionate protest of the tortured man who calls in vain that he is innocent.
Infinite contempt swept over her face. What a fool he seemed to her! What a poor, weak coward and fool!
'If there were any lover whom I loved, how I should hurl the truth of it in his face!' she thought. 'Men are such cowards—so half-hearted and so tame, and never hardly even knowing what they do love! If he would only be truthful even now, what should I care!—a wretched child off the streets, a creature who owes her very bread to him—what rival could she be to me!'
She felt for him all the superb disdain that Cleopatra might have felt had she known that Anthony toyed with a slave from the market-place, and dared not plead guilty to his paltry sin.
He heard her with indignant and bewildered amaze. There is a great simplicity in every honest man, and he, despite his knowledge of the world, was single-minded as a boy. That she should refuse to believe him when he told the truth seemed to him incredible.
'Can you insinuate that I would speak such a lie—I?' he cried to her in violent emotion.
She answered coldly: