o. I want you.
Good God! Don't you understand? My love for you isn't just a boy's
infatuation that you can dismiss with a word. It's all of me. I worship
you! Haven't I been with you day after day, worked with you, followed
your every mood--shared your very soul with you? You're mine! Mine,
because I understand you. You've shown me all you thought, all you felt.
You couldn't have done that if I hadn't meant something to you."

"Certainly you meant something to me. You meant an almost perfect
accompanist. Why should you have imagined you meant more? I gave you no
reason to think so."

"_No reason_?"

It was as though the two short words were the key which unlocked the
floodgates of some raging torrent. Magda could never afterwards recall
the words he used. She only knew they beat upon her with the cruel,
lancinating sharpness of hail driven by the wind.

She had treated him much as other men, evoking the love of his ardent
temperament by that subtle witchery which was second nature to her and
which can be such a potent weapon in the hands of a woman whose own
emotions remain untouched. And now the thwarted passion of the lover and
the savage anger of a man who felt himself deceived and duped broke over
her in a resistless storm--an outburst so bitter and so trenchant
that for the moment she remained speechless before it, buffeted into
helpless, resentful silence. When he ceased, he had stripped her of
every rag of feminine defence.

"Have you finished?" she asked in a stifled voice.

She made no attempt to palliate matters or to refute anything he had
said. In his present frame of mind it would have been useless pointing
out to him that she had treated him no differently from other men. He
was a Pole, and he had caught fire where others would merely have glowed
smoulderingly.

"Yes," he rejoined sullenly. "I've finished."

"So much the better."

He regarded her speculatively.

"What are you made of, I wonder? Does it mean nothing to you that a man
has given you his very best--all that he has?"

She appeared to reflect a moment.

"I'm afraid it doesn't. There's only one thing really means much to
me--and that is my art. And Lady Arabella," she added after a pause.
"She'll always mean a good deal."

She sat down by the fire and held out her hands to its warmth. The
slender fingers seemed almost transparent, glowing rosily in the
firelight. Davilof turned to go.

"Good-bye, then," he said curtly.

"Good