out informing; it was the very essence of anguish stripped
of words that can be smiled at, argued away, shouted down, disdained.
It was anguish naked and unashamed, the bare pain of existence let loose
upon the world in the fleeting unreserve of a look that had in it an
immensity of fatigue, the scornful sincerity, the black impudence of an
extorted confession. Alvan Hervey was seized with wonder, as though he
had seen something inconceivable; and some obscure part of his being
was ready to exclaim with him: "I would never have believed it!" but
an instantaneous revulsion of wounded susceptibilities checked the
unfinished thought.

He felt full of rancorous indignation against the woman who could look
like this at one. This look probed him; it tampered with him. It was
dangerous to one as would be a hint of unbelief whispered by a priest in
the august decorum of a temple; and at the same time it was impure,
it was disturbing, like a cynical consolation muttered in the dark,
tainting the sorrow, corroding the thought, poisoning the heart. He
wanted to ask her furiously: "Who do you take me for? How dare you look
at me like this?" He felt himself helpless before the hidden meaning of
that look; he resented it with pained and futile violence as an injury
so secret that it could never, never be redressed. His wish was to crush
her by a single sentence. He was stainless. Opinion was on his side;
morality, men and gods were on his side; law, conscience--all the world!
She had nothing but that look. And he could only say:

"How long do you intend to stay here?"

Her eyes did not waver, her lips remained closed; and for any effect
of his words he might have spoken to a dead woman, only that this one
breathed quickly. He was profoundly disappointed by what he had said.
It was a great deception, something in the nature of treason. He had
deceived himself. It should have been altogether different--other
words--another sensation. And before his eyes, so fixed that at times
they saw nothing, she sat apparently as unconscious as though she had
been alone, sending that look of brazen confession straight at him--with
an air of staring into empty space. He said significantly:

"Must I go then?" And he knew he meant nothing of what he implied.

One of her hands on her lap moved slightly as though his words had
fallen there and she had thrown them off on the floor. But her silence
encouraged him. Possibly it meant remorse--perhaps fea