She stopped short, as though to avoid coming in contact with him.
“How? What do you mean?”
“You know what I mean, Philippa. You know what you can do.”
“No, no!” she exclaimed in shocked repugnance. “How can you speak of that now?”
“Now, of all times,” he returned.
“Do you think,” Philippa replied, almost with a touch of her old disdain, “that I would so insult her dead memory? Count, have you no sense of decency?”
A dazed feeling came over her. It was only by an effort that she kept her mind clear. Although she spoke boldly she felt trapped and powerless.
“Is it nothing to me to lose Royda?” Zarka exclaimed passionately. “Girl, can you not recognize your own work? That if I forget grief and decency it is for love of you? That I am not master of myself, have no feeling but my mad love for you? Philippa, will you kill me as you have killed her? I cannot live without you! If I am to be alive at sunrise to-morrow it must be as your husband!”
“Count, this is madness.”
“You have made me mad.”