“Surely that should be a recommendation—­something in my favour?”

His eyes hardened.

“If you had dealt honestly with him, it might have been.  But you drew him on, made him care for you in spite of himself.  And then, when he was yours, body and soul, you turned him down!  Turned him down—­pretended you were surprised—­you’d never meant anything!  All the old rotten excuses a woman offers when she has finished playing with a man and got bored with him. . . .  I’ve no place for your kind of woman.  I tell you”—­his tone deepening in intensity—­“the wife of any common labourer, who cooks and washes and sews for her man day in, day out, is worth a dozen of you!  She knows that love’s worth having and worth working for.  And she works.  You don’t.  Women like you take a man’s soul and play with it, and when you’ve defiled and defaced it out of all likeness to the soul God gave him, you hand it back to him and think you clear yourself by saying you ’didn’t mean it’!”

The bitter speech, harsh with the deeply rooted pain and resentment which had prompted it, battered through Magda’s weak defences and found her helpless and unarmed.  Once she had uttered a faint cry of protest, tried to check him, but he had not heeded it.  After that she had listened with bent head, her breath coming and going unevenly.

When he had finished, the face she lifted to him was white as milk and her mouth trembled.

“Thanks.  Well, I’ve heard my character now,” she said unsteadily.  “I—­I didn’t know anyone thought of me—­like that.”

He stared at her—­at the drooping lines of her figure, the quivering lips, at the half-stunned expression of the dark eyes.  And suddenly realisation of the enormity of all he had said seemed to come to him.  But he did not appear to be at all overwhelmed by it.

“I’m afraid I’ve transgressed beyond forgiveness now,” he said curtly.  “But—­you rather asked for it, you know, didn’t you?”

“Yes,” she admitted.  “I think I did—­ask for it.”  Suddenly she threw up her head and faced him.  “If—­if it’s any satisfaction to you to know it, I think you’ve paid off at least some of your friend’s score.”  She looked at him with a curious, almost piteous surprise.  “You—­you’ve hurt me!” she whispered passionately.  She turned to the door.  “I’ll go now.”

“No!” He stopped her with a hand on her arm, and she obeyed his touch submissively.  For a moment he stood looking down at her with an oddly conflicting expression on his face.  It was as though he were arguing out some point with himself.  All at once he seemed to come to a decision.

“Look, you can’t go till the fog clears a bit.  Suppose we call a truce?  Sit down here”—­pulling forward a big easy-chair—­“and for the rest of your visit let’s behave as though we didn’t heartily disapprove of one another.”

Magda sank into the chair with that supple grace of limb which made it sheer delight to watch her movements.