She spoke, gazing frontward all the while.  The pace she maintained in no degree impeded the concentrated passion of her utterance.

But it was a more difficult task for him, going at that pace, to make explanations, and she was exquisitely fair to behold!  The falling beams touched her with a mellow sweetness that kindled bleeding memories.

“If I defend myself?” he said.

“No.  All I ask is that you should Accuse me.  Let me know what I have done—­done, that I have not been bitterly punished for?  What is it? what is it?  Why do you inflict a torture on me whenever you see me?  Not by word, not by look.  You are too subtle in your cruelty to give me anything I can grasp.  You know how you wound me.  And I am alone.”

“That is supposed to account for my behaviour?”

She turned her face to him.  “Oh, Major blaring! say nothing unworthy of yourself.  That would be a new pain to me.”

He bowed.  In spite of a prepossessing anger, some little softness crept through his heart.

“You may conceive that I have dropped my pride,” she said.  “That is the case, or my pride is of a better sort.”

“Madam, I fully hope and trust,” said he.

“And believe,” she added, twisting his words to the ironic tongue.  “You certainly must believe that my pride has sunk low.  Did I ever speak to you in this manner before?”

“Not in this manner, I can attest.”

“Did I speak at all, when I was hurt?” She betrayed that he had planted a fresh sting.

“If my recollection serves me,” said he, “your self-command was remarkable.”

Mrs. Lovell slackened her pace.

“Your recollection serves you too well, Major Waring.  I was a girl.  You judged the acts of a woman.  I was a girl, and you chose to put your own interpretation on whatever I did.  You scourged me before the whole army.  Was not that enough?  I mean, enough for you?  For me, perhaps not, for I have suffered since, and may have been set apart to suffer.  I saw you in that little church at Warbeach; I met you in the lanes; I met you on the steamer; on the railway platform; at the review.  Everywhere you kept up the look of my judge.  You! and I have been ‘Margaret’ to you.  Major Waring, how many a woman in my place would attribute your relentless condemnation of her to injured vanity or vengeance?  In those days I trifled with everybody.  I played with fire.  I was ignorant of life.  I was true to my husband; and because I was true, and because I was ignorant, I was plunged into tragedies I never suspected.  This is to be what you call a coquette.  Stamping a name saves thinking.  Could I read my husband’s temper?  Would not a coquette have played her cards differently?  There never was need for me to push my husband to a contest.  I never had the power to restrain him.  Now I am wiser; and now is too late; and now you sit in judgement on me.  Why?  It is not fair; it is unkind.”