pausing
here, without adequate reason that was apparent, she took for granted
that the friendship he offered would be a source of weakness to her.

She never stooped to try to appear reasonable. As she had been speaking,
a new look had been coming out of the habitual calmness of her face, and
now, in the pause, the calm went suddenly, and there was a flash of fire
in her eyes that he had never seen there before:

"If I were starving, would you come and offer me bread that you knew I
ought not to eat? It would be cruel." She rose up suddenly, and he stood
before her. "It is cruel of you to tantalize me with thoughts of
happiness because you know I must want it so much. I could not live and
not want it. Go! you are doing a cowardly thing. You are doing what the
devil did when our Lord was in the wilderness. But He did not need the
bread He was asked to take, and I do not need your friendship. Go!"

She held out the hand--the hand that had so often beckoned to him in
play--and pointed him to the door. He knew that he was standing before a
woman who had been irritated by inward pain into a sudden gust of anger,
and now, for the first time, he was not afraid of her. In losing her
self-control she had lost her control of him.

"Josephine," he cried, "tell me about this man, Le Maitre! He has no
right over you. Why do you think he is not dead? At least, tell me what
you know."

It seemed that, in the confusion of conflicting emotions, she hardly
wondered why he had not obeyed her.

"Oh, he is not dead!" She spoke with bitterness. "I have no reason to
suppose so. He only leaves me in suspense that he may make me the more
miserable." And then, as if realizing what she had said, she lifted her
head again proudly. "But remember it is nothing to you whether he is
alive or dead."

"Nothing to me to know that you would be freed from this horrible
slavery! It is not of my own gain, but of yours, I am thinking."

He knew that what he had said was not wholly true, yet, in the heat of
the moment, he knew that to embody in words the best that might be was
to give himself the best chance of realizing it; and he did not believe
now that her fierce assertion of indifference for him was true either,
but his best self applauded her for it. For a minute he could not tell
what Josephine would do next. She stood looking at him helplessly; it
seemed as though her subsiding anger had left a fear of herself in its
place. But what he dreade