"Extraordinary girl!" he mutters. "What does she want? What can I do? She knows I can say nothing at present, when I'm going into the work-house myself! But what a splendid creature she is! Lots of 'go' in her. Well, I don't care. I'll have her one day; but there's no use making a lot of talk about it now."
May walked away from his doorstep, no longer a sane human being, responsible for its actions. The whole physical, nervous system, weakened by months of self-control, and night following night of sleeplessness, was hopelessly dislocated now.
The whole weight of her excited passion, flung back upon the sensitive brain, turned it from its balance. It had been a brilliant brain, and that very excitability that had lent its brilliance was fatal to it now.
The hopeless passion ran like a corroding poison through the inflammable tissue.
She had put the matter to the test, and found that truth of which the mere possibility had been torture. He had absolutely rejected her. "He could not care for me," she kept repeating, as the silent air round her seemed full of his cold, short laughs.
His passion for her was dead. It had existed, surely—those looks of his, the sudden violence of his touch when there was any excuse for the slightest contact with her—or had it all been some curious dream?
She could not tell now, but whether it had been or not, it was no longer. To her that seemed the only explanation of his words and tones. To the tender female nature the depth of brutality in the passion of the male—that is, in fact, the very sign of it—remains always an enigma.
After the scene just passed, it seemed to the girl impossible, ludicrous, to suppose that Stephen loved her.
She had already made great allowance for him. She had a large share of the gift of her sex—intuition; and she had understood more than many women would have done, but to-night he had gone beyond the limits of her imagination.
"No man would be so intensely unkind to a woman he cared for," she argued. "For nothing, when there is no need."