Deceived by his silence, counting on the gentleness and charity in his nature, seeking the dramatic appeal to his sympathies, perhaps with a wild hope that she might paint such a picture that he would turn from his revenge by the very revulsion of his loathing, she began a story of a distorted childhood, of a corrupt and venal home, a terrible, incomprehensible history which he, held though he was by the whispered tragic procession of ghoulish memories, did not entirely believe. The first leaden, sullen attitude continued in the mechanical, colorless recital. The tears, one by one, rose in her eyes and traveled slowly down her cheeks, without a note of suffering breaking into her voice. He listened, fascinated, incredulous, asking himself if human artifice could invent such a history.
“That was my childhood. The rest?—nothing else matters,” she said, with a shrug of her shoulder. “You know the rest—half of it. Could you expect anything else?” She took out her handkerchief—her voice had not risen—and carefully suppressed the tears gathered on her eyes. Then she extended her hands in a little movement of appeal.
“Well?”
There was a long, tense silence.
“What a monster!” he said at last.
She believed that she had won, that she had humbled herself so low in this hideous confession that she was now beneath his contempt. She flung herself at his feet, clinging to them, crying:
“Dan, Dan, let me go—let me go—don’t drag us both down!”
“Drag you down!” He burst into a wild laugh.
She rose, abruptly disillusioned, and looked at him as though she would spring at his throat.
“Keep on looking at me like that,” he said coldly. “Now we have the truth!”