"Look at me," he said at last, "and see."

She did look at him. For the space of ten seconds their eyes were fixed
upon each other in a long, bitter look. Then her little bundle dropped
on the ground.

"Ye've went back on me," she said under her breath again. "Ye've went
back on me!"

He had thought she might make some passionate outcry, but she did not
yet. A white wrath was in her face and her chest heaved, but she spoke
slowly and low, her hands fallen down by her side.

"Ye've went back on me," she said. "An' _I knew ye would_."

He felt that the odor of his utter falseness tainted the pure air about
him; he had been false all round,--to himself, to his love, to his
ideals,--even in a baser way here.

"Yes," he answered her with a bitterness she did not understand, "I've
gone back on you." Then, as if to himself, "I could not even reach
perfection in villainy."

Then her rage and misery broke forth.

"Yer a coward!" she said, with gasps between her words. "Yer afraid! I'd
sooner--I'd sooner ye'd killed me--_dead!_"

Her voice shrilled itself into a smothered shriek, she cast herself face
downward upon the earth and lay there clutching amid her sobs at the
grass.

He looked down at her in a cold, stunned fashion.

"Do you think," he said hoarsely, "that you can loathe me as I loathe
myself? Do you think you can call me one shameful name I don't know I
deserve? If you can, for God's sake let me have it."

She struck her fist against the earth.

"Thar wasn't a man I ever saw," she said, "that didn't foller after me,
'n' do fur me, 'n' wait fur a word from me. They'd hev let me set my
foot on 'em if I'd said it. Thar wasn't nothin' I mightn't hev done--not
nothin'. An' now--an' now "--and, she tore the grass from its earth and
flung it from her.

"Go on," he said. "Go on and say your worst."

Her worst was bad enough, but he almost exulted under the blows she
dealt him. He felt the horrible sting a vague comfort. He had fallen
low enough surely when it was a comfort to be told that he was a liar, a
poltroon, and a scoundrel.

The sun had been down an hour when it was over and she had risen and
taken up her bundle.

"Why don't ye ask me to forgive ye?" she said with a scathing sneer.
"Why don't ye ask me to forgive ye--an' say ye didn't mean to do it?"

He fell back a pace and was silent. With what grace would the words have
fallen from his lips? And yet he knew that he had not _meant_ to do it.