And to Eva it seemed that her soul, after having been dragged through a gutter, was bleeding to death under these pin-pricks. It was a very sensible pain when she hopelessly compared the reality with her dreams, as they grew more vague and faded away, when she argued with herself in the cold light of reason, and asked herself, "Why am I so wretched? Because Frank is a young man like other young men; because Bertie is a pessimist, and despairs of my ever being happy?" And then she would shrug her shoulders; her trouble was intangible, had paled to a thin cloud, and vanished. She had always been very happy; Bertie's dejection was sickly nonsense; she should be happy again. But, notwithstanding that her common sense thus dissipated the pain, it constantly returned in spite of reason and argument; returned persistently, like an object tossed on a wave, which comes and goes, comes and goes.
She could endure it no longer, and one day when she ventured to look honestly into her own heart, she saw that she did indeed doubt Frank, and the truth of his statements about that woman. Longing for some certainty, she asked Bertie—his friend:
"Tell me, Bertie—that Something of which you once spoke to me; that mystery: what is it?"
"Oh, nothing, my dear girl, absolutely nothing."
She gazed at him with penetrating eyes, and went on in a strange, cold tone:
"Well; but I know; I have guessed."
Bertie was startled. What was she thinking? what had she got into her head?"
"Yes, I have guessed it," she repeated. "Frank does not love me; he loves—he loves that woman —that creature of the Lyceum. He has always loved her; is it so?"
Bertie said nothing, but stared before him; that was the easiest and best reply.
"Bertie, tell me, is it so?"
"No, it is not so," he answered, dully. "What a foolish notion to have got into your head. What made you think of such a thing?" But there was no ring of conviction in his voice; he spoke mechanically, as though in absence of mind, as if he were thinking of something else.
"Does he ever see her now?" she went on, feeling as if she were defiling herself with her own words; as if her lips were dropping slime.
"Why, of course not. What are you thinking of?"
She leaned back with a sigh, and tears glistened in her large eyes. He was silent for a minute, studying her out of the corner of his eye. Then, as if to mitigate his too feeble repudiation of the suspicion, he went on reproachfully:
"Really, Eva, you must not think such things of Frank. It is not nice; you must have some confidence in the man you are to marry."
"Then it is not the truth?"
"Certainly not. He never sees her now."
"But does not he think of her still?"
He gave her a long, deep, enigmatical look. His eyes were like black velvet darkness; she could not read their meaning.
"Fie!" said he, reprovingly, and he shook his head.
"That is no answer," she said, urgently. And again he fixed that dark gaze on her.
"Good God! answer me!" she cried, her heart wrung to the very core.
"How can you expect me to know Frank's feelings?" he dared to murmur. "I don't know— there!"
"Then it is so?" she moaned, clutching his hands.
"I don't know," he repeated, and, freeing himself from her grasp, he turned away and rose.
"He loves her; he can not live without her; he is that creature's slave, as you men sometimes are to such women; and though he sees her no more, out of respect for me, he thinks of her and talks of her to you—and that is why he is so silent and grave when he is here. Is it so?"
"Good Heavens! I do not know," he groaned, with mild impatience. "How should I know?"
"But why then does he pretend to love me? Why did he ask me to marry him? Because once, for a moment in Norway, he fancied he could do without her? Because he meant to live a new life, and now finds that he can not?" She clasped her hands with a gesture of anguish.
"Good God, Eva! say no more—say no more. I do not know, I tell you—I know nothing about it—nothing."
He sank back in his chair with a sigh of exhaustion. She said no more; the tears streamed from her eyes like rain impossible to be restrained.
CHAPTER XVI
And in her misery she thought she had been very clever and cunning, and that she had guessed rightly; while, in truth, as guileless as a child, she had been as it were hypnotized by his magnetic gaze, and had spoken the very words he had intended she should utter.
She felt nothing of this; she saw him still as her brother-friend, fragile, affectionate, and unhappy, dreading to wound her, anxious to screen her from the truth for fear of hurting her, and yet not crafty enough to conceal it when she pressed him too closely. This was how he appeared to her. Not for an instant did she suspect that she was as a fly wrapping itself closer and closer in the spider's toils.
Bertie himself, after this scene, failed to see
