Page:Eekhoud - The New Carthage.djvu/374

346 him, she succeeded in releasing herself, and bounded to the other side of the table:

"All my compliments, master cheat! And to think that I was accusing Vera-Pinto! It is you who are the tool of Béjard! I follow it, now. After having paid you for maltreating me this afternoon, he counted upon surprising me with you, you hideous clown! Your ugliness and your beastliness would have made the enormity of my fault even greater!"

Whipped by this violent attack, as blinded as though she had dashed a bottle of vitriol in his face, Laurent did not even try to justify himself. Appearances overwhelmed him; the best thing he could do would be to take himself off at once. The arrival of Béjard might convert her slanderous hypothesis into a reality at any moment.

Laurent took to flight, not without stumbling many times, ready to fall.

Gina! His dearly beloved Gina! To think him capable of such deceit! Never could Laurent rise beyond it again. He would be right forever more to wallow in all mire to add ignominies to ignominies: his worst actions would seem good beside the one of which she had impeached him, and the severest penalties, the most infernal expiation that a list of unimaginable iniquities would yield him would seem gentle and clement to him when compared with the rigor and the cruelty of her accusation.

Gina herself could never retrieve her error nor repare her injustice. It was indelible. Any rehabilitation or forgiveness would come too late.