Vexed and frightened for himself at her sudden wild abandonment of grief, he stooped, and gripping her by the arm tried to draw her up from the floor.

“Be quiet!” he said, roughly—­“I will not have a scandal here in my studio!  You’ll bring my man-servant up in a moment with your stupid noise!  I’m ashamed of you!—­screaming and crying like a virago!  If you make this row I shall go away!”

“Oh, no, no, no!—­do not go away!” she moaned, sobbingly—­“Have some little pity!  Do not leave me, Amadis!  Is everything forgotten so soon?  Think for a moment what you have said to me!—­what you have been to me!  I thought you loved me, dear!—­yes, I thought you loved me!—­you told me so!” And she held up her little hands to him folded as in prayer, the tears raining down her cheeks—­“But if for some fault of mine you do not love me any more, kill me now—­here—­just where I am!—­kill me, Amadis!—­or tell me to go away and kill myself—­I will obey you!—­but don’t—­don’t send me into the empty darkness of life again all alone!  Oh, no, no!  Let me die rather than that!—­you would not think unkindly of me if I were dead!”

He took her uplifted hands in his own—­he began to be “artistically” interested,—­with the same sort of interest Nero might have felt while watching the effects of some new poison on a tortured slave,—­and a slight, very slight sense of regret and remorse tugged at his tough heart-strings.

“I should think of you exactly as I do now,” he said, resolutely—­ “If you were to kill yourself I should not pity you in the least!  I should say that though you were a bit of a clever woman, you were much more of a fool!  So you would gain nothing that way!  You see, I’m sane and sensible—­you are not.  You are excited and hysterical—­and don’t know what you are talking about.  Yes, child!—­that’s the fact!” He patted the hands he held consolingly, and then let them go.  “I wish you’d get up from the floor and be reasonable!  The position is quite simple and clear.  We’ve had an ideal time of it together—­but isn’t it Shakespeare who says ‘These violent delights have violent ends’?  My work calls me to Algiers—­yours keeps you in London—­therefore we must part—­but we shall meet again—­some day—­I hope...”

She slowly rose to her feet,—­her sobbing ceased.

“Then—­you never loved me?” she said—­“It was all a lie?”

“I never lie,” he answered, coldly—­“I loved you—­for the time being.  You amused me.”

“And for your ‘amusement’ you have ruined me?”

“Ruined you?” He turned upon her in indignant protest—­“You must be mad!  You have been as safe with me as in the arms of your mother—­”

At this she laughed,—­a shrill little laugh with tears submerging it.

“You may laugh, but it is true!” he went on, in a righteously aggrieved tone—­“I have done you no harm,—­on the contrary, you have to thank me for a great deal of happiness—­”