But I am still so tired--and everything that one says, and feels, hurts so." She sank down upon a chair.

This womanish appeal to his pity had not been at all in her programme.

Nor did it immediately succeed.

As he looked at her, he could only feel the wantonness of this eclipse into which she had plunged her youth and beauty.

There was wrath, a passionate protesting wrath, under his pain.
"Marcella," he said, sitting down beside her, "did you read my letter that I wrote you the day before-- ?" "Yes." "And after that, you could still believe that I was indifferent to your grief--your suffering--or to the suffering of any human being for whom you cared?
You could still think it, and feel it ?" "It was not what you have said all through," she replied, looking sombrely away from him, her chin on her hand, "it is what you have done." "What have I done ?" he said proudly, bending forward from his seat beside her.