The light smouldering eyes held me fast. “You mean, I suppose, Fanny, that you’d just kill it,” I mumbled, looking up into her distorted face. “I don’t think I should much mind even that. But it’s no use. It would take hours to answer your questions. You have only put them your own way. They may sound true. But in your heart you know they are false. Why should you bother to hurt me? You know—you know how idiotically I loved you.”
“Loved me, false, kill,” echoed Fanny scornfully, with a leer which transformed her beauty into a mere vulgar grimace. “Is there any end to the deceits of the little gaby? Do you really suppose that to be loved is a new experience for me; that I’m not smeared with it wherever I go; that I care a snap of my fingers whether I’m loved or not; that I couldn’t win through without that? Is that what you suppose? Well, then, here’s one more secret. Open your ears. I am going to marry Percy Maudlen. Yes, that weed of a creature. You may remember my little prophecy when he brought his Aunt Alice’s manikin some lollipops. Well, the grace of God is too leisurely, and since you and I are both, I suppose, of the same sex, I tell you I care no more for him than that—” She flung the nectarine stone at the beehive. “And I defy you, defy you to utter a word. I am glad I was born what I am. All your pretty little triumphs, first to last, what are they?—accidents and insults. Isn’t half the world kicking down the faces of those beneath them on the ladder? I have had to fight for a place. And I tell you this: I am going to teach these supercilious money-smelling ladies a lesson. I am going to climb till I can sneer down on them. And Mrs. Monnerie is going to help me. She doesn’t care a jot for God or man. But she enjoys intelligence, and loves a fighter. Is that candour? Is it now?”
“I detest Percy Maudlen,” I replied faintly. “And as for sneering, that only makes another wall. Oh, Fanny, do listen to yourself, to what you are. I swear I’m not the sneak you think me. I’d help you, if I could, to my last breath. Indeed, I would. Yes, and soon I can.”
“Thank you: and I’d rather suffocate than accept your help—now. Listen to myself, indeed! That’s just the pious hypocrite all over. Well, declarations of love you know quite enough about for your—for your age. Now you shall hear one of a different kind. I tell you, Midgetina, I hate you: I can’t endure the sight or sound or creep or thought of you any longer. Why? Because of your unspeakable masquerade. You play the pygmy; pygmy you are: carried about, cosseted, smirked at, fattened on nightingales’ tongues—the last, though, you’ll ever eat. But where have you come from? What are you in your past—in your mind? I ask you that: a thing more everywhere, more thief-like, more detestable than a conscience. Look at me, as we sit here now. I am the monstrosity. You see it, you think it, you hate even to touch me. From first moment to last you have secretly despised me—me! I’m not accusing you. You weren’t your own maker. As often as not you don’t know what you are saying. You are just an automaton. But these last nights I have lain awake and thought of it all. It came on me as if my life had been nothing but a filthy, aimless nightmare; and chiefly because of you. I’ve worked, I’ve thought, I’ve contrived and forced my way. Oh, that house, the wranglings, the sermons. Did I make myself what I am, ask to be born? No, it’s all a devilish plot. And I say this, that while things are as they are, and this life is life, and this world my world, I refuse to be watched and taunted and goaded and defamed.”
Her face stooped closer, fascinating, chilling me like a cold cloud with its bright, hunted, malevolent stare. She stretched out a hand and wrung my shoulder. “Listen, I say. Come out of that trance! I loathe you, you holy imp. You haunt me!”
My eyes shut. I sat shivering, empty of self, listening, as if lost in a fog in a place desperately strange to me; and only a distant sea breaking and chafing on its stones far below. Then once more I became conscious of the steady and resolute droning of the bees; felt the breathing of actuality on my hair, on my cheek. My eyes opened on a garden sucked dry of colour and reality, and sought her out. She had left me, was standing a few paces distant now, looking back, as if dazed, her lips pale, her eyes dark-ringed.
“Perhaps you didn’t quite hear all that, Midgetina. You led me on. You force things out of me till I am sick. But some day, when you are as desperate as I have been, it will come back to you. Then you’ll know what it is to be human. But there can’t be any misunderstanding left now, can there?”
I shook my head. “No, Fanny. I shall know you hate me.”
“And I am free?”
What could she mean? I nodded.
She turned, pushed up her parasol. “What a talk! But better done with.”
“Yes, Fanny,” said I obediently. “Much better
