Page:The Yellow Book - 08.djvu/359

"I will never forgive you all my life," he broke forth angrily. "You—you are a devil."

"Why—why—" she stammered, her mind tossing in the drift of her emotions.

"I loved her," he said furiously; "I loved her, do you hear? And you—you who attracted me by a chance resemblance, you—"

His passionate utterance went no further. Her face had fallen ashen; she moistened her lips, and then with a little meaningless motion of her hand, she stroked her hair.

"Let me go," she murmured, and walked uncertainly to the door.

The long windows of the dining-room stood open, and the moonlight was in flood upon the garden. Marion walked forth without intelligence of her action. Her dress trailed heavily upon the wet grass, and was snatched and plucked by the briars as she passed. Her brain was a heavy lump within her head; her heart, faint and tremulous, was shot at intervals with ominous pains. The calamity had fallen at the very moment of her triumph. She understood now that when she had merely dreaded she had not really suffered. Now that she realised, her frail world broke about her. His words had been a pitiless weapon against her, and she had fled as by instinct to hide the dishonour of her wounds in private, as some poor hunted creature steals away to die.

Marion stood near the gateway and looked out across the meadow. It seemed to her now that she had come into this house upon a false pretence; she had no rights in it. She compared dully her joyous entrance barely six months before, in the full tide of summer, with this ruthless and ignoble expulsion. Circumferenced with her humiliation she contemplated the ruins of her life with staring, tearless eyes. The dark vault of the night, scattered with stars andspread