Part 31 (2/2)
”Do you realize it?” From a tone of suppressed fury his voice rose suddenly to a roar ”You shall For that horror which wasshall now be yours until you die”
He paused; but Lionel one out of hiain, as suddenly as it had flickered up, he cowered where he had been flung
”Before you go there is so for which I have had you brought hither to-night
”Not content with having deliveredbranded ood name, filched my possessions and driven me into the very path of hell, youmy place in the false heart of this woman I once loved”
”I hope,” he went on reflectively, ”that in your own poor way you love her, too, Lionel Thus to the torment that awaits your body shall be added torment for your treacherous soul--such torture of ht you hither That youof what is in store for this woht of it with you to be to your mind worse than the boatswain's lash to your pampered body”
”You devil!” snarled Lionel ”Oh, you fiend out of hell!”
”If you will manufacture devils, little toad of a brother, do not upbraid the devils when next you meet them”
”Give him no heed, Lionel!” said Rosamund ”I shall prove him as much a boaster as he has proved himself a villain Never think that he will be able to work his evil will”
”'Tis you are the boaster there,” said Sakr-el-Bahr ”And for the rest, I am what you and he, between you, have made me”
”Did we make you liar and coward?--for that is what you are indeed,” she answered
”Coward?” he echoed, in genuine surprise ”'Twill be some lie that he has told you with the others In what, pray, was I ever a coward?”
”In what? In this that you do now; in this taunting and torturing of two helpless beings in our power”
”I speak not of what I am,” he replied, ”for I have told you that I am what you have made me I speak of what I was I speak of the past”
She looked at hilance
”You speak of the past?” she echoed, her voice low ”You speak of the past and to ether that I have fetched you all the way fros I was a fool to have kept froo; that we may resume a conversation which you interrupted when you dismissed me”
”I did you a monstrous injury, no doubt,” she answered hi in consideration It would have become me better to have smiled and fawned upon my brother's murderer”
”I swore to you, then, that I was not his murderer,” he reminded her in a voice that shook
”And I answered you that you lied”
”Ay, and on that you dismissed me--the word of the man whoiven your trust weighing for naught with you”
”When I gave you norance of your true self, in a headstrong wilful ignorance that would not be guided by what all the world said of you and your ays For that blind wilfulness I have been punished, as perhaps I deserved to be”
”Lies--all lies!” he stormed ”Those ways of mine--and God knows they were none so wild, when all is said--I abandoned when I caan was ever so cleansed, so purified, so sanctified by love as was I”
”Spare