be seeing you—­influencing you—­perhaps setting you against me—­all the time I was away.  But then when I came back, I couldn’t understand you.  You avoided me.  It was nothing but check after check—­which you seemed to enjoy inflicting.  At last, on the night of our ball I seemed to see clear.  On that night, I did think—­yes, I did think, that I was something to you!—­that you could not have been so sweet—­so adorable—­in the sight of the whole world—­unless you had meant that—­in time it would all come right.  And so next day, on our ride, I took the tone I did.  I was a fool; of course.  All men are, when they strike too soon.  But if you had had any real feeling in your heart for me—­if you had cared one ten-thousandth part for me, as I care for you, you couldn’t have treated me as you did last night—­so outrageously—­so cruelly!”

The strong man beside her was now trembling from head to foot.  Constance, hard-pressed, conscience-struck, utterly miserable, did not know what to reply.  Falloden went on impetuously: 

“And now at least don’t decide against me without thinking—­without considering what I have been saying.  Of course the whole thing may blow over.  Radowitz may be all right in a fortnight.  But if he is not—­if between us, we’ve done something sad and terrible, let’s stand together, for God’s sake!—­let’s help each other.  Neither of us meant it.  Don’t let’s make everything worse by separating and stabbing each other.  I shall hear what has happened by to-night.  Let me come and bring you the news.  If there’s no great harm done—­why—­you shall tell me what kind of letter to write to Radowitz.  I’m in your hands.  But if it’s bad—­if there’s blood-poisoning and Radowitz loses his hand—­that they say is the worst that can happen—­I of course shall feel like hanging myself—­everybody will, who was in the row.  But next to him, to Radowitz himself, whom should you pity more than—­the man—­who—­was three parts to blame—­for injuring him?”

His hoarse voice dropped.  They came simultaneously, involuntarily to a standstill.  Constance was shaken by alternate waves of feeling.  Half of what he said seemed to her insolent sophistry; but there was something else which touched—­which paralysed her.  For the first time she knew that this had been no mere game she had been playing with Douglas Falloden.  Just as Falloden in his careless selfishness might prove to have broken Otto Radowitz’s life, as a passionate child breaks a toy, so she had it in her power to break Falloden.

They had wandered down again, without knowing it, to the banks of the river, and were standing in the shelter of a group of young chestnuts, looking towards the hills, over which hung great thunder-clouds.

At last Constance held out her hand.

“Please go now,” she said pleadingly.  “Send me word to-night.  But don’t come.  Let’s hope.  I—­I can’t say any more.”

And indeed he saw that she could bear no more.  He hesitated—­yielded—­took her unresisting hand, which he pressed violently to his lips—­and was gone.