truth!--that I was a
tiny bit more persuasive, or more clear-sighted, or more happy in some
contention, or more just in some decision, than perhaps I really was.
I needed to be shown your affection for me, as I was ever ready, ever
anxious, to show mine for you, in all the little ways that are the
language of the heart and that fill a woman's life with music.

"All this I needed. My nature cried out for it as instinctively as the
nature of man cries out for God. But all this I needed generally in
vain. You were not always a niggard. You were ready sometimes to give
in your way. But were you ever ready to give in mine when you saw--and
sometimes you must have seen, sometimes you did see--what mine was? I
longed always to give you all you wanted in the way you wanted it. But
you gave when you wished and as you chose to give. I was often grateful.
I was too often grateful. I was unduly grateful. Because I was giving, I
was always giving far more than I received.

"But all that time I had something. All that time I had a memory that I
counted sacred. All that time, like an idiot child, I was clasping in my
hand a farthing, which I believed, which I stated, to be a shining piece
of gold.

"You knew what it was. You knew it was a farthing! You knew--you knew!

"And now that the hour has come when I know, too, can't you understand
that I realize not only that that farthing is a farthing, but that all
farthings are farthings? Can't you understand that I hate those who have
given me farthings when my hands were stretched out for gold--my hands
that were giving gold?

"Can't you understand? Can't you? Then I'll make you understand! I'll
make you! I'll make you!"

Again the blackness gathered itself together, took a form, the form of
a wave, towered up as a gigantic wave towers, rolled upon Artois
to overwhelm him. He stood firm and received the shock. For he was
beginning to understand. He was no longer confronting waves of hatred
which were also waves of mystery.

He had thought that Hermione hated him, hated every one just then,
because of what Ruffo had silently told her that day at Mergellina. But
as he stood there in the dark at the door of that black chamber, hearing
the distant murmur of the sea about the palace walls, there were borne
in upon him, as if in words she told him, all the reasons for present
hatred of him which preceded the great reason of that day; reasons
for hatred which sprang, perhaps, which surel