‘Oh! for heaven’s sake,’ she caught her hands away from him, ’don’t be generous.  Whip me with scorpions.  And don’t touch me,’ cried Diana.  ’Do you understand?  You did not name it as a secret.  I did not imagine it to be a secret of immense, immediate importance.’

‘But—­what?’ shouted Dacier, stiffening.

He wanted her positive meaning, as she perceived, having hoped that it was generally taken and current, and the shock to him over.

‘I had . . .  I had not a suspicion of doing harm, Percy.’

‘But what harm have you done?  No riddles!’

His features gave sign of the break in their common ground, the widening gulf.

’I went . . . it was a curious giddiness:  I can’t account for it.  I thought . . .’

‘Went?  You went where?’

’Last night.  I would speak intelligibly:  my mind has gone.  Ah! you look.  It is not so bad as my feeling.’

‘But where did you go last night?  What!—­to Tonans?’

She drooped her head:  she saw the track of her route cleaving the darkness in a demoniacal zig-zag and herself in demon’s grip.

‘Yes,’ she confronted him.  ‘I went to Mr. Tonans.’

‘Why?’

‘I went to him—­’

‘You went alone?’

‘I took my maid.’

‘Well?’

‘It was late when you left me . . .’

‘Speak plainly!’

‘I am trying:  I will tell you all.’

‘At once, if you please.’

’I went to him—­why?  There is no accounting for it.  He sneered constantly at my stale information.’

‘You gave him constant information?’

’No:  in our ordinary talk.  He railed at me for being “out of it.”  I must be childish:  I went to show him—­oh! my vanity!  I think I must have been possessed.’

She watched the hardening of her lover’s eyes.  They penetrated, and through them she read herself insufferably.

But it was with hesitation still that he said:  ‘Then you betrayed me?’

‘Percy!  I had not a suspicion of mischief.’

‘You went straight to this man?’

‘Not thinking . . .’

‘You sold me to a journalist!’

’I thought it was a secret of a day.  I don’t think you—­no, you did not tell me to keep it secret.  A word from you would have been enough.  I was in extremity.’

Dacier threw his hands up and broke away.  He had an impulse to dash from the room, to get a breath of different air.  He stood at the window, observing tradesmen’s carts, housemaids, blank doors, dogs, a beggar fifer.  Her last words recurred to him.  He turned:  ’You were in extremity, you said.  What is the meaning of that?  What extremity?’

Her large dark eyes flashed powerlessly; her shape appeared to have narrowed; her tongue, too, was a feeble penitent.

‘You ask a creature to recall her acts of insanity.’