ou? 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.

Thursdale stood up, facing his hostess. Half the room was between them,
but they seemed to stare close at each other now that the veils of
reticence and ambiguity had fallen.

His first words were characteristic. "She DOES despise me, then?" he
exclaimed.

"She thinks the pound of flesh you took was a little too near the
heart."

He was excessively pale. "Please tell me exactly what she said of me."

"She did not speak much of you: she is proud. But I gather that while
she understands love or indifference, her eyes have never been opened to
the many intermediate shades of feeling. At any rate, she expressed an
unwillingness to be taken with reservations--she thinks you would have
loved her better if you had loved some one else first. The point of view
is original--she insists on a man with a past!"

"Oh, a past--if she's serious--I could rake up a past!" he said with a
laugh.

"So I suggested: but she has her eyes on his particular portion of it.
She insists on making it a test case. She wanted to know what you had
done to me; and before I could guess her drift I blundered into telling
her."

Thursdale drew a difficult breath. "I never supposed--your revenge is
complete," he said slowly.

He heard a little gasp in her throat. "My revenge? When I sent for you
to warn you--to save you from being