“I never hated you till you began to persecute me——”
“Persecute!” he interrupted her impatiently, almost with temper. “Cannot a man declare his love and do all in his power to get it returned without being called a persecutor?”
“It is at least unchivalrous,” she replied, “to try to compel a woman’s love. In the old days I could have had none for you. Now it is more than ever impossible.”
His face lowered. “Since Herriard appeared on the scene,” he said through his teeth. “Herriard, who is my creature, the puppet of my whim, the marionette that, lying on my sick couch, I made to dance to my fancy, and have ended, to my sorrow, by galvanizing into my rival.”
He spoke with an intensity of bitterness that seemed to strip naked his jealous, malignant soul. But Alexia appeared to take little heed of the stinging words. “Mr. Herriard,” she said coolly, “has little or nothing to do with my feeling towards you.”
“No? Then we brush the lay figure aside out of our consideration.” He accompanied the words with a contemptuous sweep of the arm. “At least,” he continued, “I am glad you realize that a mere speaking puppet has no right to stand between intellects like yours and mine. Now, tell me, what have I done to stand worse with you now than in the old days?”
“You have slandered me, Mr. Gastineau,” she answered steadily.
He made a gesture of making light of a charge not worth denying. “To the doll, to the child, to keep him from meddling with what was meant for his betters, as we keep a baby’s hands off a valuable ornament by saying it will bite him. Surely my presence here, the words I have spoken to you, give the lie to the idea that I could ever believe ill of you.”
“To my mind,” she retorted, “your slander, of all men’s, gives the lie to what you have forced me to listen to to-night.”
A curious change swept over his face. He had realized, even before she did, the half-thought that was suggested by and lay behind her words.