"Do you not feel reproached," I said.
"Why? Must we give our love to whoever loves us? A fine parcel of paupers we should all be, wasting our inheritance in pitiful small change! Shall I give a thousand beggars a half hour's happiness, or shall I make one soul rich his whole life long?"
"The latter," remarked Edward, who had come up unobserved.
They gazed at each other unflinchingly. They had come to open battle during those last days, and I knew that the end was near. Their words had been cold as ice, cutting as steel, and I said to myself, "At any moment." There would be a deadly struggle, and then Christine would yield. Even I comprehended something of what that yielding would be. There are beautiful velvety panthers in the Asian forests, and in real life too, sometimes.
"Why do they hate each other so?" Felipa said to me sadly.
"Do they hate each other?"
"Yes, for I feel it here," she answered, touching her breast with a dramatic little gesture.
"Nonsense! Go and play with your doll, child." For I had made her a respectable, orderly doll to take the place of the ungainly fetich out on the barren.
Felipa gave me a look and walked away. A moment afterward she brought the doll out of the house before my very eyes, and, going down to the end of the dock, deliberately threw it into the water: the tide was flowing out, and away went my toy-woman out of sight, out to sea.
"Well!" I said to myself. "What next?"