"How do you know that it wasn't to get rid of OUR
monotony, OUR solitude that I drove him to this vulgar distraction,
this pitiful--yes, you were right--pitiful ambition?"
"Because it isn't your real nature," he said quietly.
"My real nature," she repeated with a half savage vehemence that
seemed to be goaded from her by his very gentleness, "my real
nature! What did HE--what do YOU know of it?--My real nature!--
I'll tell you what it was," she went on passionately. "It was to
be revenged on you all for your cruelty, your heartlessness, your
wickedness to me and mine in the past. It was to pay you off for
your slanders of my dead father--for the selfishness that left me
and Jim alone with his dead body on the Marsh. That was what sent
me to Logport--to get even with you--to--to fool and flaunt you!
There, you have it now! And now that God has punished me for it by
crushing my brother--you--you expect me to let you crush ME too."
"But," he said eagerly, advancing toward her, "you are wronging me--
you are wronging yourself, cruelly."
"Stop," she said, stepping back, with her hands still locked behind
her. "Stay where you are. There! That's enough!" She drew
herself up and let her hands fall at her side. "Now, let us speak
of Jim," she said coldly.
Without seeming to hear her, he regarded her for the first time
with hopeless sadness.
"Why did you let my brother believe you were his rival with Cicely
Preston?" she asked impatiently.
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