"A lifetime!" she repeated more quietly, staring at him with blank eyes.
"It's hard on me too," he said roughly.
"On you!" she cried with a laugh such as despair alone can render horrible. "Oh, on you!"
All at once he understood that the cry had been torn from her by the vision of the youth she saw expiring.
"There now—" he said desperately. "After all, seven years are soon over, and half a million is something to wait for."
"What good will it do me then!" she said, sinking into a chair and covering her face with her hands. Then seized with a convulsive sobbing, she cried, "No, no, it is too cruel. I won't do it, I won't, I can't!"
"Come, don't be a fool," he said angrily, taking her by the shoulder.
"Seven years, seven years!" she cried hysterically. "What good will it do me then, what do I care for money then! Oh, my youth, my youth! And this is the end of it. I knew it, I knew it! Fargus, you were not human! Fargus, you did this to punish me!"
All at once she rose, shaken and frantic as a prophetess, and seizing her hair in her hands cried:
"Oh, those years, I see them, those seven terrible years!"