Page:Blackwood's Magazine volume 137.djvu/651

1885.] "I am going for a walk."

"You are going to the mountains, and Mademoiselle Mohr is going also."

"She may be – I don't know."

Another long stare from her eyes, before her lips said doggedly –

"She is, and you do know."

He turned with an oath upon his lips.

"Cursed be your obstinacy! Have it then, since you will: she is going, and I do know it."

"I thought so," said Tryphosa, calmly. "And what do you mean to do about me?"

"Mean? I don't mean anything. I don't know what I mean, and I can't tell you. It is stronger than I am, do you hear? It is no good speaking to me at all."

"You mean to break your promises."

The words, plainly spoken, were ugly even to István's ears: he turned, and taking up his soft hat, began crushing it up between his hands.

The small Codran, finding his mother's conversation and movements excessively wearisome, had wandered off towards the corner, and after affectionately pulling handfuls of hair out of the rugged bear-skin, had fallen asleep upon it. His mother, going towards him, dragged him up and drew him to her side. If she had had more leisure, she would certainly have felt pity for the small victim; but at this moment he was to her no more than a piece of decoration necessary for the scene.

"Have you never thought, Baron Tolnay, that I am not a woman to let myself be abandoned in this way?" she asked.

"Don't threaten me, Tryphosa!" and she saw a gleam in his eye – "don't threaten me; if you are desperate, so am I."

"Look at my child; I made him fatherless – for your sake."

"I never asked you to do it," he said, speaking wildly. It was a brutal thing to say, after all that had passed between them. Even he could not have said it, had he not been half out of his senses at the moment. He certainly could not have said it if she had looked at this moment as she had looked that evening when he had taken the pomegranate flower from her hair. She had been beautiful then; she was scarcely so now. The voluptuous glow of colouring about her seemed faded. She was a woman who imperiously demanded warm-tinted, luxurious surroundings. This cold morning light did not suit her; the sharp air seemed to chill her; her face looked old and hard; her very eyes were sunken. She was like any other of her countrywomen who has just missed being beautiful. Moreover, she was unwittingly pursuing the very course which with Tolnay was most fatal; she was pressing him to a distinct answer, and this pressure made him furious.

"You did ask me to do it on your knees. István, shall I kneel to you now?"

"Let me go – let me go!" cried István, tearing away his arm from the grasp of her clinging hand.

"Yes, I shall let you go. I am not strong enough to hold you with my hands; but rid of me you shall never be. Oh, István! you should not have loved me – you should have loved some woman whose heart is as light as your own. István, listen to me: by all the sacrifices which I have made, by my love to my son, by the memory of your love to me – I conjure you, listen to me!"

"Enough, enough!" cried István, turning from her – for the