"I owed it to myself to shew him what I was really like, not what the halfpenny press thinks I am. He fell in love; and then, when he asked me to marry him, I lost my head——"
"But you never told him that you weren't in love with him," Loring interrupted again.
Barbara's eyes fell.
"I'd lost my nerve as well as my head," she sighed. "He'd have thought so much worse of me. I didn't see him after that until to-night; I hoped it was all over. I told him again that I couldn't marry him and then I told him the truth—that I wasn't in love with him. And then—then he saw everything.... Jim, I'm not asking for mercy from him or you or any one; I'm telling you the truth and I want to be judged on that. Until to-night I honestly didn't know how bad it was, I didn't know that I was anything more than some one who attracted him——"
"You accursed women never do!" Loring broke in. "Well, go on! You played with him and led him on and checked him till he proposed—men, hard-headed men who aren't drunk, don't propose when they're merely 'attracted'—he proposed, and you told him an extremely ingenious lie which I should have thought your extravagant superstition might have kept you from telling. Then! Then, when he pays you the compliment of thinking you a woman of honour, you admit it's a lie. Go on, Barbara!"
She shook her head slowly and leaned wearily forward, resting her chin on her hand.
"It's no good, Jim. If any one hits you often enough in the same place, you cease to feel. You want to hurt me—I don't wonder!—but you can't; I'm too bruised. No, he said hardly anything. It wasn't necessary to say anything; he knew...."
Loring strode to the table, picked up a cigarette and flung it back into the box. He found that Barbara was watching him with wonder in her eyes and waited till his indignation was under control.
"And so you got a new emotion," he sneered. "Two, in fact. You played cat and mouse with a man's happiness; and then you had the morbid pleasure of letting yourself be flayed alive.... I should think it will be your last emotion for some time."
"As you like, Jim. But it'll be easier if I tell you everything and then let you criticize.... Jack hardly said a word. It was sinking in; and it was sinking in with me, too. I'm not a coward, Jim——"