'You used to be a kind-hearted man,' she says, scanning, as if in dispassionate search, his sorrowful features; 'perhaps you are still, if happiness has not hardened your heart. It does harden the heart sometimes, they tell me; it is a long time since I have had a chance of judging by experience. But, if you are, try not to let me hear much of your happiness—try to keep it as quiet as you can.'
Her last words are almost inaudible through the excess of the emotion that has dictated them.
'Perhaps you will have your wish,' he says gloomily, for the last half-hour seems to have shaken all the fabric of his prospective Elysium; 'perhaps there will not be much to hide.'
'That is a very civil suggestion on your part,' she answers, relapsing into biting sarcasm; 'so likely, too. Go on. I am cheered already: find out some more equally probable topics of consolation for me. Why do not you remind me that I still have my husband—my husband whose society you have taught me so much to enjoy; my visiting-book; my—my——'
'You have your boy,' he interrupts sternly, goaded into anger out of compassion by her tone.
Her hands drop from his, and a light shiver runs over her shuddering body.
'I—have—my—boy,' she repeats slowly; 'so I have. God forgive me for having even for one moment forgotten him! Yes, I have him—bless him! but for how long? Even if he lives—oh, he will live! God cannot take him too from me—I was a fool ever to fear it; but even if he lives to grow up, he too will go from me. People will tell him things about me; or if they do not tell him, he will pick up hints. I shall see it in his eyes, and then he—too—will—go—from me!' breaking into a long moaning sob. 'I suppose,' looking in utter revolt up to heaven, 'that They will be satisfied then. I shall have nothing—nothing—NOTHING left!'
She has broken into a storm of frantic tears, that rain from her eyes and career unheeded down her white gown. He can only look on miserably.
'But at least,' she says deliriously, every word marking a higher stage in the rising sea of her frenzy, 'I shall always have been first! Neither you nor she can take that from me. It may make you both mad to think so, but you cannot. I shall always—always have been there first. You may tell her so from me, if you like,' with one last burst of dreadful laughter; 'it will be no breach of confidence, for I give you leave.'
Then, in a moment, before he can divine her intention, or—even if he had the heart to do so—arrest her, she has flung her arms convulsively about his neck; and in a moment more she is gone, leaving him there dazed and staggering in the starlight, with the agony of her good-bye kiss on his lips, and his face wet with her scorching tears.