“That’s your little view: there spoke Nan Dene!—And if you thought that, anyway why did you flaunt your happiness in my face? Eh?”
“Oh, Silas, you kept asking me....”
“And if I did! Was it part of your kindness that you boast of, to give me the glimpse of a feast I couldn’t share? Was it meant as a treat? You’d be willing to give me kindness; I couldn’t expect more,—a blind man like me. Very lucky to get as much.” He roared suddenly with laughter. “That’s a pallid sort of thing to offer,—I won’t give you thanks for that,” he cried.
Nan thought that he was really going mad; madness and disaster had broken crashing over her world. The forces loosed were too great and too bewildering for her to strive against; the sanity of Linnet, the sanity of their joy, was lost for ever, lost, foundered in the madness of the hurricane brought about by Silas and Gregory. For Gregory there might be some excuse; Silas appeared to be possessed by a senseless, impersonal fury of destruction. She thought she might as well argue with the unleashed elements as with Silas in his bitterness and diabolical delight. Yet life still moved, still endeavoured; and, pricked by its promptings, she struggled,—
“You hurt me and Linnet because we are safe to hurt; we can’t hurt you back.”
“It’s not true!” he yelled.
She was utterly astonished at the effect she had produced.
“But, Silas,” she said, inspired, “we all know you for a coward. We all know your talk for bluster. Did you think we didn’t know that, by now?”
II
She had not at first spoken tauntingly. She thought she had meant only to pronounce the truth. Then she perceived that the truth had cut deeper than any taunt. She was as a naked, unarmed person driven up against a wall, that finds suddenly a blade put into their hands. She held it, but was perplexed how best to use it. She made a thrust,—