n him how I cared:
I should have made him believe he loved me best. But I was a fool. I
flung it all at his feet. And it was only natural he should get tired
of me. The wonder was that I held him so long. But, oh, how can one
care as I did, and yet be able to plot and plan? I couldn't. It isn't
in me to do it."

She wept despairingly, with her head on her outstretched arms. When she
raised it again, her tear-stained face looked out, Medusa-like, from
its setting of ruffled hair. More to herself than to the young man, as
if, on this day, secret springs had been touched in her, she continued
with terse disconnectedness: "I couldn't believe it; I wouldn't--even
when I heard it from his own lips. You thought, all of you, that I was
ill; but I wasn't; I was only trying to get used to the terrible
thought--just as a suddenly blinded man has to get used to being always
in the dark. And while I was still struggling came Madeleine, with her
cruel tongue, and told me--you know what she told me. Oh, if his
leaving me had been hard to bear, this stung like scorpions. I wonder I
didn't go mad. I should have, if you hadn't come to help me. For a day
and night, I did not move from the corner of that sofa there. I turned
her words over till there was no sense left in them. My nails cut my
palms."

Her clasped hands were slightly stretched from her: her whole attitude
betrayed the tension at which she was speaking. "Oh, my God, how I
hated him ... hated him ... how I hate him still! If I live to be an
old, old woman, I shall never forgive him. For, in time, I might have
learnt to bear his leaving me, if it had only been his work that took
him from me. It was always between us, as it was; but it was at least
only a pale brain thing, not living flesh and blood. But that all the
time he should have been deceiving me, taking pains to do it--that I
cannot forgive. At first, I implored, I prayed there might be some
mistake: you, too, told me there was. And I hoped against hope--till I
saw her. Then, I knew it was true-----as plainly as if it had been
written on that wall." She paused for breath, in this bitter pleasure
of laying her heart bare. "For I wasn't the person he could always have
been satisfied with--I see it now. He liked a woman to be fair, and
soft, and gentle--not dark, and hot-tempered. It was only a phase, a
fancy, that brought him to me, and it couldn't have lasted for ever.
But all I asked of him was common honesty--to be