Part 7 (1/2)

”What is it,” she asked when he at last confronted her, ”that ails ye?”

She uttered the words in a half whisper, as if she had not the power to speak louder, and he saw the hand hanging at her side close itself.

”What is it--that ails ye?”

He waited a few seconds before he answered her.

”Look at me,” he said at last, ”and see.”

She did look at him. For the s.p.a.ce of ten seconds their eyes were fixed upon each other in a long, bitter look. Then her little bundle dropped on the ground.

”Ye've went back on me,” she said under her breath again. ”Ye've went back on me!”

He had thought she might make some pa.s.sionate outcry, but she did not yet. A white wrath was in her face and her chest heaved, but she spoke slowly and low, her hands fallen down by her side.

”Ye've went back on me,” she said. ”An' _I knew ye would_.”

He felt that the odor of his utter falseness tainted the pure air about him; he had been false all round,--to himself, to his love, to his ideals,--even in a baser way here.

”Yes,” he answered her with a bitterness she did not understand, ”I've gone back on you.” Then, as if to himself, ”I could not even reach perfection in villainy.”

Then her rage and misery broke forth.

”Yer a coward!” she said, with gasps between her words. ”Yer afraid! I'd sooner--I'd sooner ye'd killed me--_dead!_”

Her voice shrilled itself into a smothered shriek, she cast herself face downward upon the earth and lay there clutching amid her sobs at the gra.s.s.

He looked down at her in a cold, stunned fas.h.i.+on.

”Do you think,” he said hoa.r.s.ely, ”that you can loathe me as I loathe myself? Do you think you can call me one shameful name I don't know I deserve? If you can, for G.o.d's sake let me have it.”

She struck her fist against the earth.

”Thar wasn't a man I ever saw,” she said, ”that didn't foller after me, 'n' do fur me, 'n' wait fur a word from me. They'd hev let me set my foot on 'em if I'd said it. Thar wasn't nothin' I mightn't hev done--not nothin'. An' now--an' now ”--and, she tore the gra.s.s from its earth and flung it from her.

”Go on,” he said. ”Go on and say your worst.”

Her worst was bad enough, but he almost exulted under the blows she dealt him. He felt the horrible sting a vague comfort. He had fallen low enough surely when it was a comfort to be told that he was a liar, a poltroon, and a scoundrel.

The sun had been down an hour when it was over and she had risen and taken up her bundle.

”Why don't ye ask me to forgive ye?” she said with a scathing sneer.

”Why don't ye ask me to forgive ye--an' say ye didn't mean to do it?”

He fell back a pace and was silent. With what grace would the words have fallen from his lips? And yet he knew that he had not _meant_ to do it.

She turned away and at a distance of a few feet stopped. She gave him a last look--a fierce one in its contempt and anger, and her affluence of beauty had never been so stubborn a fact before.