is shame my husband fixed upon me; hemmed me round with,
himself; steeped me in, with his own hands, and of his own act, repeated
hundreds of times. And thus--forced by the two from every point of
rest I had--forced by the two to yield up the last retreat of love
and gentleness within me, or to be a new misfortune on its innocent
object--driven from each to each, and beset by one when I escaped the
other--my anger rose almost to distraction against both I do not know
against which it rose higher--the master or the man!'

He watched her closely, as she stood before him in the very triumph of
her indignant beauty. She was resolute, he saw; undauntable; with no
more fear of him than of a worm.

'What should I say of honour or of chastity to you!' she went on. 'What
meaning would it have to you; what meaning would it have from me! But if
I tell you that the lightest touch of your hand makes my blood cold with
antipathy; that from the hour when I first saw and hated you, to now,
when my instinctive repugnance is enhanced by every minute's knowledge
of you I have since had, you have been a loathsome creature to me which
has not its like on earth; how then?'

He answered with a faint laugh, 'Ay! How then, my queen?'

'On that night, when, emboldened by the scene you had assisted at, you
dared come to my room and speak to me,' she said, 'what passed?'

He shrugged his shoulders, and laughed

'What passed?' she said.

'Your memory is so distinct,' he said, 'that I have no doubt you can
recall it.'

'I can,' she said. 'Hear it! Proposing then, this flight--not this
flight, but the flight you thought it--you told me that in the having
given you that meeting, and leaving you to be discovered there, if you
so thought fit; and in the having suffered you to be alone with me many
times before,--and having made the opportunities, you said,--and in the
having openly avowed to you that I had no feeling for my husband but
aversion, and no care for myself--I was lost; I had given you the power
to traduce my name; and I lived, in virtuous reputation, at the pleasure
of your breath.'

'All stratagems in love---' he interrupted, smiling. 'The old adage--'

'On that night,' said Edith, 'and then, the struggle that I long had had
with something that was not respect for my good fame--that was I know
not what--perhaps the clinging to that last retreat--was ended. On that
night, and then, I turned from everything but passion and resentme