Part 46 (1/2)
”That depends--on you.”
”What do you mean?”
Again he waved her to a seat.
”Sit down and I'll tell you.”
Trembling, she dropped once more on to a chair and waited. He puffed deliberately at his cigarette for a few moments and then, turning his glance in her direction, he smiled in a peculiar, horrible way and his eyes ran over her figure in a way that made the crimson rush furiously to her cheek. There was no mistaking that smile. It was the bold, l.u.s.tful look of the voluptuary who enjoys letting his eyes feast on the prey that he knows cannot now escape him.
”Mrs. Traynor,” he began in the caressing, dulcet tones which she feared more than his anger, ”you are an exceptional woman. To most men of my temperament you would not appeal. They would find your beauty too statuesque and cold. I know you are clever, but love cannot feed on intellect alone, I have loved many women, but never a woman just like you. Your coldness, your haughty reserve, your refinement would intimidate most men and keep them at a distance, but not me. Your aloofness, your indifference only spurs me, only adds to the acuteness of my desire. I swore to myself that I would conquer you, overcome your resistance, bend you to my will. You turned me out of your home.
I swore to be avenged.”
He stopped for a moment and watched her closely as if studying and enjoying the effect of his words. Then, amid a cloud of blue tobacco smoke, he went on:
”I knew only one way to win you--it was to humiliate you, to place you in a position where you would have to come to me on your knees.”
She half rose from her chair.
”I would never do that,” she cried. ”I would rather die!”
”Oh, yes, you will,” he continued, calmly, making a gesture to her to remain seated. ”When I've told you all, you'll see things in a different light.” Fixing her steadily with his piercing black eyes, he asked: ”Have you noticed any difference in your husband since his return.”
She looked up quickly.
”Yes--what does it mean? Can you explain?”
He nodded.
”Did you ever hear your husband speak of a twin brother he once had?”
Her face turned white as death and her heart throbbing violently, she stared helplessly at her persecutor. She tried to be calm, but she could not. Yet, why be so alarmed, why should this single question so agitate her? In the deepest recesses of her being she knew that it was her unerring instinct warning her that she was about to hear something that would entail worse suffering than any she had yet endured.
”Yes--yes--why do you ask?” she gasped.
”You all thought the brother dead.”
”Yes.”
”You were mistaken. He is alive.”
”Where is he?” she faltered.
”Here in New York.”
”Where?”
”In your house. The man who returned home was not your husband. He was your husband's twin brother.”
She looked at him as one bewildered, as if she did not understand what he was saying, as if words had suddenly lost their meaning. Her face, white as in death, she faltered:
”Not Kenneth--then where is Kenneth?”