than her own;
she saw with his eyes, felt with his senses. She pictured Ephie's face,
arch and smiling, lifted to his; and she understood and excused his
weakness. He had not been able to help what had happened: this was the
prettiness that drew him in, the kind he had invariably turned to look
back at, in the street--something fair and round, adorably small and
young, something to be petted and protected, that clung, and was
childishly subordinate. For her dark sallowness, for her wilful
mastery, he had only had a passing fancy. She was not his type, and she
knew it. But to have known it vaguely, when it did not matter, and to
know it at a moment like the present, were two different things.

In a burst of despair she let her arms fall to her sides; but her
insatiable eyes gazed on; and Ephie, though she was now free, did not
stir, but remained standing, with her face raised, in a silly
fascination. And the eyes, having taken in the curves of cheeks and
chin, and the soft white throat, passed to the rounded, drooping
shoulders, to the plumpness of the girlish figure, embracing the whole
body in their devouring gaze. Ephie went hot and cold beneath them; she
felt as if her clothes were being stripped from her, and she left
standing naked. Louise saw the changing colour, and interpreted it in
her own way. His--all his! He was not the mortal--she knew it only too
well--to have this flower within his reach, and not clutch at it,
instinctively, as a child clutches at sunbeams. It would riot have been
in nature for him to do otherwise than take, greedily, without
reflection. At the thought of it, a spasm of jealousy caught her by the
throat; her hanging hands trembled to hurt this infantile prettiness,
to spoil these lips that had been kissed by his.

Maurice was at her side. "Don't hurt her," he said, and did not know
how the words came to his lips.

The spell was broken. The unnatural expression died out of her face;
she was tired and apathetic.

"Hurt her?" she repeated faintly. "No, don't be afraid. I shall not
hurt her. But if I beat her with ropes till all my strength was gone, I
couldn't hurt her as she has hurt me."

"Hush! Don't say such things."

"I? I hurt you?" said Ephie, and began to cry afresh. "How could I? I
don't even know you."

"No, you don't know me; and yet you have done me the cruellest wrong."

"Oh, no, no," sobbed Ephic. "No, indeed!"

"He was all I had--all I cared for. And you plotted, a