What
have you to say now?"
The tone in which she spoke warned me that my influence over her was a
lost influence once more.
"We were to look at what happened on my birthday night, together," she
went on; "and we were then to understand each other. Have we done that?"
She waited pitilessly for my reply. In answering her I committed a
fatal error--I let the exasperating helplessness of my situation get the
better of my self-control. Rashly and uselessly, I reproached her for
the silence which had kept me until that moment in ignorance of the
truth.
"If you had spoken when you ought to have spoken," I began; "if you had
done me the common justice to explain yourself----"
She broke in on me with a cry of fury. The few words I had said seemed
to have lashed her on the instant into a frenzy of rage.
"Explain myself!" she repeated. "Oh! is there another man like this in
the world? I spare him, when my heart is breaking; I screen him when my
own character is at stake; and HE--of all human beings, HE--turns on me
now, and tells me that I ought to have explained myself! After believing
in him as I did, after loving him as I did, after thinking of him by
day, and dreaming of him by night--he wonders I didn't charge him with
his disgrace the first time we met: 'My heart's darling, you are a
Thief! My hero whom I love and honour, you have crept into my room under
cover of the night, and stolen my Diamond!' That is what I ought to have
said.
Pages:
648
649
650
651
652
653
654
655
656
657
658
659
660
661
662
663
664
665
666
667
668
669
670
671
672