“Why should he come?” she said, almost angrily.
“That is what I want you to tell me.”
Maddalena was silent. She shifted uneasily in her chair, which creaked under her weight, and twisted her full lips sideways. Her whole body looked half-sleepily apprehensive. The parrot watched her with supreme attention. Suddenly Hermione felt that she could no longer bear this struggle, that she could no longer continue in darkness, that she must have full light. The contemplation of this stolid ignorance—that yet knew how much?—confronting her like a featureless wall almost maddened her.
“Who are you?” she said. “What have you had to do with my lie?”
Maddalena looked at her and looked away, bending her head sideways till her plump neck was like a thing deformed.
“What have you had to do with my life? What have you to do with it now? I want to know!” She stood up. “I must know. You must tell me! Do you hear?” She bent down. She was standing almost over Maddalena. “You must tell me!”
There was again a silence through which presently the tram-bell sounded. Maddalena’s face had become heavily expressionless, almost like a face of stone. And Hermione, looking down at this face, felt a moment of impotent despair that was succeeded by a fierce, energetic impulse.
“Then,” she said—“then—I’ll tell you!”
Maddalena looked up.
“Yes, I’ll tell you.”