Page:Held to Answer (1916).pdf/203

 seemed to me at first that I could hardly get my own consent to come at all from her to you; that I must doom myself to perpetual loneliness to expiate my sin. And yet, Bessie," John made the mistake of trying to extenuate, "it was probably not altogether unnatural, knowing man as I begin to know him."

To the young girl, facing the first bitter disillusionment of love, it came like a flash of intuition that this last was true; that men were like that—all men! They were mere brutes! This intuition maddened the girl, and her disturbed emotions expressed themselves in a burst of flaming anger.

"You may go back to Marien Dounay," she exclaimed hotly. "I do not want her left-overs."

"But," protested John, with something of that sense of injury which a man is apt to feel if forgiveness does not follow soon upon confession, "you do not understand!"

"I understand," retorted Bessie with blazing sarcasm, "that you fell hopelessly in love with this woman; that you embraced her, kissed her, worshipped the ground she trod on; that you proposed to marry her almost upon the spot; that she refused you and drove you from her; that for a month you wrote me letters of hypocritical pretense; that when she finally not only repulsed you but revealed herself to you as a woman without character, you considerately revived your affections for me."

John felt that in this storm of words some injustice was being done him; yet he could not deny that such an outburst of wrath upon Bessie's part was natural, and he humbled himself before the blast.

In the vehemence of her demonstration, Bessie had arisen, and after the final word stood with her back to her lover, looking out upon the little lake which suddenly seemed a frozen sheet of ice.