"I mean that she _did_ believe me: too thoroughly."
"Well, then--in God's name, what did she want?"
"Something more--those were the words she used."
"Something more? Between--between you and me? Is it a conundrum?" He
laughed awkwardly.
"Girls are not what they were in my day; they are no longer forbidden
to contemplate the relation of the sexes."
"So it seems!" he commented. "But since, in this case, there wasn't
any--" he broke off, catching the dawn of a revelation in her gaze.
"That's just it. The unpardonable offence has been--in our not
offending."
He flung himself down despairingly. "I give it up!--What did you tell
her?" he burst out with sudden crudeness.
"The exact truth. If I had only known," she broke off with a beseeching
tenderness, "won't you believe that I would still have lied for you?"
"Lied for me? Why on earth should you have lied for either of us?"
"To save you--to hide you from her to the last! As I've hidden you from
myself all these years!" She stood up with a sudden tragic import in
her movement. "You believe me capable of that, don't you? If I had only
guessed--but I have never known a girl like her; she had the truth out
of me with a spring."
"The truth that you and I had never--"
"Had never--never in all these years! Oh, she knew why--she measured us
both in a flash. She didn't suspect me of having haggled with you--her
words pelted me like hail. 'He just took what he wanted--sifted and
sorted you to suit his taste. Burnt out the gold and left a heap of
cinders. And you let him--you let yourself be cut in bits'--she mixed
her metaphors a little--'be cut in bits, and used or discarded, while
all the while every drop of blood in you belonged to him! But he's
Shylock--and you have bled to death of the pound of flesh he has cut
out of you.' But she despises me the most, you know--far the most--"
Mrs. Vervain ended.
The words fell strangely on the scented stillness of the room: they
seemed out of harmony with its setting of afternoon intimacy, the kind
of intimacy on which at any moment, a visitor might intrude without
perceptibly lowering the atmosphere. It was as though a grand
opera-singer had strained the acoustics of a private music-room.
Thursdale stood up, facing his hostess. Half the room was between them,
but they seemed to stare close at each other now that the veils of
reticence and ambiguity had fallen.
His first words were characteristic. "She _does_ despise me, then?" he
exclaimed.
"She thinks the pound of flesh you took was a little too near the
heart."