'Wretched superstition!' she says between her teeth, still rending the morsel of lawn in her fingers; 'how could I, of all people, have been such a fool as to be conquered by it? What did it matter to the Powers above—what did they care whether I kept or threw away the one miserable bit of consolation I had in my hideous life? The child would have got well all the same, while I—I—but perhaps' (her tone changing to one of alert suspicion), 'perhaps even then you had come to an understanding, you and she. Perhaps even then you were hoodwinking me. I was so easy to hoodwink—I, of all people, who had always thought myself so wide awake—ha! ha!'
Again that dreadful laugh assails his ear, and makes him shiver as if it were December's blasts that were biting, not May's breezes kissing his cheek.
'I never hoodwinked you!' he answers, in an agitation hardly inferior to her own; 'it was always plain-sailing between us. I went away because you sent me.'
'And you took me at my word?' cries she wildly. 'Yes, I know that then, at that moment, I meant you to take me at it; but I was out of my mind. Hundreds of people less mad than I was then are in Bedlam. You might as well have listened to the ravings of a lunatic as to mine that day; and—you—took—me—at—my word!'
Her speech, which in its beginning was shrill and rapid, ends almost in a whisper.
'I thought you meant it,' he says miserably; 'before God, I thought you meant it!'
'The wish was father to the thought,' she says, again breaking into that laugh which jars upon him far more than would any tears or revilings; 'you believed it because you wished it. I showed you a handsome way out of your dilemma. I played into your hands. Without knowing it—oh, I think that you will believe it was without knowing it—I played into your hands. Without hurting my feelings—without quite giving the lie to all your glib vows—without any disagreeable shuffling—you were free! I set you free! I! Oh, the humour of it! I wonder how you could have kept any decent countenance that morning! and I—I—never saw it. Oh, I must have been blinder than any mole or bat not to have seen it, but I did not!'
She pauses, as if suffocated; but in a moment or two has recovered breath and composure enough to resume:
'And I was sorry for you. I do not know why I have a pleasure in showing up my own folly to you; but, as you say, it has always been plain-sailing between us, and one does not easily shake off an old habit. Yes, sorry for you! Not at first. At first I could think of nothing but him; but he took a turn for the better very soon—God bless him! As long as he was only getting well, it was enough for me to think that I had him back—oh, quite enough!' some tears stealing, for the first time, into her scorching eyes; 'but when he was on his legs again, and everything going on as usual, then I began to see what I had done.'
Her voice has sunk to a low, lagging key of utter dispiritedness.