Still I am silent. Though I stand in the free clear air of heaven, I could not feel more choked and gasping were I in some close and stifling dungeon, hundreds of feet underground. I think that the brook must have got into my brain, there is such a noise of bubbling and brawling in it. Barbara, Roger, Algy, a hundred confused ideas of pain and dismay jostle each other in my head.
"Why do you look at me so?" he says, hoarsely. "What have I done? For God's sake, do not think that I blame you! I never have been so sorry for any one in my life as I have been for you—as I was for you from the first moment I saw you! I can see you now, as I first caught sight of you—weariness and depression in every line of your face—"
I can bear no more. At his last words, a pain like a knife, sharp to agony, runs through me. It is the grain of truth in his wicked, lying words that gives them their sting. I was weary; I was depressed; I was bored. I fling out my arms with a sudden gesture of despair, and then, throwing myself down on the ground, bury my face in a great moss cushion, and put my fingers in my ears.
"O my God!" I cry, writhing, "what shall I do?—how can I bear it?"
After a moment or two I sit up.
"How shameful of you!" I cry, bursting into a passion of tears. "What sort of women can you have lived among? what a hateful mind you must have! And I thought that you were a nice fellow, and that we were all so comfortable together!"
He has drawn back a pace or two, and now stands leaning against one of the bent and writhen trunks of the old trees. He is still as pale as the dead, and looks all the paler for the burning darkness of his eyes.
"Is it possible," he says, in a low tone of but half-suppressed fury, "that you are going to pretend to be surprised?"
"Pretend!" cry I, vehemently; "there is no pretense about it! I never was so horribly, miserably surprised in all my life!"
And then, thinking of Barbara, I fall to weeping again, in utter bitterness and discomfiture.