"The exact truth. If I had only known," she broke off with a
beseeching tenderness, "won't you believe that I would still have
lied for you?"
"Lied for me? Why on earth should you have lied for either of us?"
"To save you--to hide you from her to the last! As I've hidden you
from myself all these years!" She stood up with a sudden tragic
import in her movement. "You believe me capable of that, don't you?
If I had only guessed--but I have never known a girl like her; she
had the truth out of me with a spring."
"The truth that you and I had never--"
"Had never--never in all these years! Oh, she knew why--she measured
us both in a flash. She didn't suspect me of having haggled with
you--her words pelted me like hail. 'He just took what he
wanted--sifted and sorted you to suit his taste. Burnt out the gold
and left a heap of cinders. And you let him--you let yourself be cut
in bits'--she mixed her metaphors a little--'be cut in bits, and
used or discarded, while all the while every drop of blood in you
belonged to him! But he's Shylock--and you have bled to death of the
pound of flesh he has cut out of you.' But she despises me the most,
you know--far the most--" Mrs. Vervain ended.
The words fell strangely on the scented stillness of the room: they
seemed out of harmony with its setting of afternoon intimacy, the
kind of intimacy on which at any moment, a visitor might intrude
without perceptibly lowering the atmosphere. It was as though a
grand opera-singer had strained the acoustics of a private
music-room.
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