Page:Held to Answer (1916).pdf/468

 rather pitiful. But Hampstead, looking at the beautiful shell of this woman who had so vindictively hurled him down, was not in a mood to feel pity. Instead he was merely incredulous.

"Love?" he asked cynically, rising from his seat.

"Yes," exclaimed the woman with convulsive eagerness, as if her voice choked over speaking what her lips, by the traditional modesty of her sex and the mountain of her pride and self-will, had been too long forbidden to utter. "Yes, I have always loved you!"

With this much of a beginning, excitedly and with the air of one whose course was predetermined, the actress plucked off her hat, stabbed the pin into it, and tossed it upon the window seat; then nervously stripped the gloves from her hands; all the while hurrying on with a sort of defensive vehemence to aver:

"I have loved you from the first moment when you held me in your arms long enough for me to feel the electric warmth of your personality. You roused, kindled, and enflamed me! The sensation was delicious; but I resented it. It offended my pride. I had never been overmastered. You overmastered me without knowing it. I hated you for it. You were so—so unsophisticated; so good, so simple, so ready to worship, to admire, to ascribe the beauties of my body to the beauties of my soul. I hated you for that, for my soul was less beautiful than my body, and I knew it. I resisted you and yielded to you; I hated you and loved you; I spurned you and wanted you.

"You were so awkward, so impossible; you had so much of talent and knew so little how to use it. It seemed to me the very mockery of fate that my heart should fasten its affection upon you. I tried to break the spell, and could not. I yielded to my heart. I had to love you, to let myself adore you.