hat
you forgive me the blight and ill I brought upon you?"

She had listened to him unmoved outwardly. Her reply was instant. "You
are more melodramatic than I thought you capable of being--from your
appearance," she said in a hard tone. "Your acting is very good, but not
convincing. I cannot respond as would become the unity and sequence of
the play.... I have no husband. My husband is dead--I buried him years
ago. I have forgotten his name--I buried that too."

All the suffering and endured scorn of years came to revolt in him. He
leaned forward now, and caught her wrist. "Have you no human feeling?"
he said "no heart in you at all? Look. I have it in me here suddenly to
kill you as you stand. You have turned my love to hate. From your smooth
skin there I could strip those rags, and call upon them all to look at
you--my wife--a felon's wife; mine to have and to hold--to hold, you
hear!--as it was sworn at the altar. I bare my heart to you, repenting,
and you mock it, torture it, with your undying hate and cruelty. You
have no heart, no life. This white bosom is all of you--all of your
power to make men love you--this, and your beauty. All else, by God, is
cruel as the grave!"

His voice had sunk to a hoarse whisper. She had not sought to remove
his hand, nor struggled in the least; and once it seemed as if this new
development of his character, this animal fierceness, would conquer her:
she admired courage. It was not so. He trembled with weakness before he
had finished. He stopped too soon; he lost.

"You will find such parts exhausting to play," she murmured, as he let
her arm fall. "It needs a strong physique to endure exaggerated, nervous
sentiment. And now, please, let us perform less trying scenes." Then,
with a low, cold anger, she continued: "It is only a coward that will
dog a woman who finds his presence insupportable to her. This woman
cannot, if she would, endure this man's presence; it is her nature.
Well, why rush blindly at the impossible? She wishes to live her spoiled
life alone. The man can have no part in it--never, never! But she has
money. If in that way--"

He stretched out his hand protestingly, the fingers spread in
excitement. "No more--not another word!" he said. "I ask for
forgiveness, for one word of kindness--and I am offered money! the fire
that burned me to eat, instead of bread! I had a wife once," he added in
a kind of troubled dream, looking at her as if she were very far away,