“Who?”
“You wish me to tell you?” she replied in a hard, bitter tone. “Surely you cannot affect ignorance that you are loved by Muriel Moore?”
“Muriel!” I gasped in amazement. “How did you know?”
She smiled.
“There is but little that escapes me,” she answered. “You loved each other before our romantic meeting, and I, the woman who must necessarily bring evil upon you, have come to separate you. Yet you calmly stand by and invite me to wreck your life! Ah! you cannot know who I am, or you would cast me from your thoughts for over.”
“Then who are you?” I blurted forth, in blank amazement.
“I have already told you. You have, of your own free will, united yourself with me by a declaration of love, and the consequences are therefore upon your own head.”
“Cannot you love like other women?” I demanded. “Have you no heart, no feeling, no soul?”
“No,” she sighed. “Love is forbidden me. Hatred takes its place; a fierce, deadly hatred, in which vengeance is untempered by justice, and fatality is always inevitable. Now that I confess, will you not cast me aside? I have come here to you to urge you to do this ere it is too late.”
“You speak so strangely that I’m bewildered,” I declared. “I have told you of my love, and will not relinquish you.”