"You did them because they suited your mood? What you wanted you took; the thing you felt that you wanted to do you did?"
"Without a regret? Without one single backward thought of us?"
"Why should I think of you?" she asked scornfully. "What did you mean in my life, any of you, after I once put you all behind me? Does one think again of the food that nourished him yesterday, or of the sun that kept him warm? I was born into this world like any other thing that breathes, to live if I was strong, to die if I was weak. I did not ask for life, but when it came, why should I not get all of its brightness if I could? Why should I think of anyone's pleasures or pains but my own? What is the world to me but the place in which I am to live my own life, in my own way, and for my own good?"
"You need not go on," he said quietly. "You have told me all that I wished to know."
"But you have not given me the promise I came here to get." As she spoke she rose unsteadily from her chair, clinging for support to the back of it and looking at him with a fierce questioning in her eyes. "Will you stay by me until my heart fails?"
"And if you fail?" At her question her voice rose shrilly, almost to a scream. "If I die, as they said that I must--what will you do then? Answer! Answer! Will you bring my life back to me? Will you?"
He would not answer; for a moment she looked at him, her face frozen into lines of awful terror; then screaming, panting, she staggered to the door, and opening it she called wildly:
They rushed in, Maria following, and would have gone to her, but she waved them back and pointed at her father, her face dreadful with its look of fear and hatred. "Listen! You--you must help me. You must make that man swear what I want him to swear, and you must see that he keeps his word! He must! He won't if he can help it. I know he won't. Look at him! Look at his face. What do you read there? Pity? Love? Sympathy? Sympathy for me? Do you? No! Fear! He is afraid that I will make him swear, and I will--I will----!"
She rushed at him, staggered forward as though she would tear the promise from him, but as they cried out and threw themselves between, she stopped suddenly and, throwing up her arms, screamed once and fell at their feet. Dr. Crossett knelt beside her and in a moment looked up gravely.