"I ... I cannot ... I cannot speak," she stammered, and then there was a dead silence.
When Rossi spoke again his face was dark as a thundercloud, and his voice hoarse as a raven's.
"If that is so, there is nothing more to say."
She looked up at him with a pathetic remonstrance, but he met her eyes with the gaze of a relentless judge who had tried and condemned her.
"I was not to blame, David—I swear before God I was not."
"Yet you allowed me to go on believing that falsehood. The woman who could do a thing like that could do anything. She could pretend to be poor, pretend to be tempted, pretend...."
"David, what are you saying?"
Rossi broke into a peal of mad laughter.
"Saying? That you have deceived me from the beginning, when you undertook to betray me to your master and paramour."
"David!"