from him, held
on to the back of it. "I know?" she repeated, as if to herself. Then
she drew a long breath, which quivered through her, and, with it, voice
and emotion and the power of expression returned. "I know?" she cried
with a startling loudness. "Good God, you fool, do you think I'd be
here with you, if I had known?--if I had known!"

A foreboding of what he had done came to Maurice. "Take care!--take
care what you say!"

She burst into a peal of hysterical laughter, which echoed through the
woods.

"Take care!" he said again, and trembled.

"Of what?--of you, perhaps? YOU!"

"I may kill you yet."

"Oh, such as you don't kill!"

She lowered her veil, and stooped for her gloves. He looked up at her
swift movement. There was a blueness round his lips.

"What are you going to do?"

She laughed.

"You're ... you're going to him! Louise!--you are NOT going to him?"

"Oh, you poor, crazy fool, what made you tell me?"

"Stay here!" He caught her by the sleeve. But she shook his hand off as
though it were a poisonous insect. "For God's sake, think what you're
doing! Have a little mercy on me!"

"Have you ever had mercy on me?"

She took a few, quick steps away from the seat, then with an equally
impulsive resolve, came back and confronted him.

"You talk to me of mercy?--you!--when nothing I could wish you would be
bad enough for you?--Oh, I never thought it would be possible to hate
anyone as I hate you--you mean-souled, despicable dummy of a man!--Why
couldn't you have let me alone? I didn't care that much for you--not
THAT much! But you came, with your pretence of friendship, and your
flattery, and your sympathy--it was all lies, every word of it! Do you
think what has happened to us would ever have happened if you'd been a
different kind of man?--But you have never had a clean thought of
me--never! Do you suppose I haven't known what you were thinking and
believing about me in these last weeks?--those nights when I waited
night after night to see a light come back in his windows? Yes, and I
let you believe it; I wanted you to; I was glad you did--glad to see
you suffer. I wish you were dead!--Do you see that river? Go and throw
yourself into it. I'll stand here and watch you sink, and laugh when I
see you drowning.--Oh, I hate you--hate you! I shall hate you to my
last hour!"

She spat on the ground at his feet. Before he could raise his head, she
was gone.

He made an involuntary, but wholly