'Oh, I regret nothing,' he said, accommodatingly.
'Good then,' she answered, 'good then. Then neither of us cherishes any
regrets, which is as it should be.' 'Quite as it should be,' he said aimlessly.
She paused to gather up her thread again.
'Our attempt has been a failure,' she said. 'But we can try again,
elsewhere.' A little flicker of rage ran through his blood. It was as if she were
rousing him, goading him. Why must she do it?
'Attempt at what?' he asked.
'At being lovers, I suppose,' she said, a little baffled, yet so
trivial she made it all seem.
'Our attempt at being lovers has been a failure?' he repeated aloud.
To himself he was saying, 'I ought to kill her here. There is only this
left, for me to kill her.' A heavy, overcharged desire to bring about
her death possessed him. She was unaware.
'Hasn't it?' she asked. 'Do you think it has been a success?' Again the insult of the flippant question ran through his blood like a
current of fire.
'It had some of the elements of success, our relationship,' he replied.
'It--might have come off.' But he paused before concluding the last phrase. Even as he began the
sentence, he did not believe in what he was going to say. He knew it
never could have been a success.
'No,' she replied. 'You cannot love.' 'And you?' he asked.
Her wide, dark-filled eyes were fixed on him, like two moons of
darkness.
'I couldn't love YOU,' she said, with stark cold truth.
A blinding flash went over his brain, his body jolted. His heart had
burst into flame. His consciousness was gone into his wrists, into his
hands. He was one blind, incontinent desire, to kill her. His wrists
were bursting, there would be no satisfaction till his hands had closed
on her.
But even before his body swerved forward on her, a sudden, cunning
comprehension was expressed on her face, and in a flash she was out of
the door. She ran in one flash to her room and locked herself in. She
was afraid, but confident. She knew her life trembled on the edge of an
abyss. But she was curiously sure of her footing. She knew her cunning
could outwit him.
She trembled, as she stood in her room, with excitement and awful
exhilaration. She knew she could outwit him. She could depend on her
presence of mind, and on her wits. But it was a fight to the death, she
knew it now. One slip, and she was lost. She had a strange, tense,
exhilarated sickness in her body, as one who is in peril of falling
from a great height, but who does not look down, does not admit the
fear.