“Stella is n't an ordinary girl,” said John, leaning back in his writing-chair and looking at Herold from beneath his heavy brows.
“For that reason she thinks and feels a thousand times more acutely. She's ill, she's changed, she's the shadow of herself,” he went on fiercely, “and it's all through you.”
He broke off and, as John said nothing, he put both hands on the table and leaned over and looked into John's eyes.
“I 'll tell you another thing. The whole lot of us have caused her endless misery. We 've fed her all her life on lies. God knows how I hated them! Her coming out in the world has been a gradual discovery of them. She has had shock after shock. She has n't told me,--she's too proud,--but I know, I can read it in her face, in her eyes, in the tone of her voice. And now she's going through the biggest disillusion of all--you.”
“Do you mean,” said John, frowning heavily, “that she thinks I'm a blackguard because I seem--you put the phrase in my head by talking of the ordinary young woman--because I seem to have thrown her over?”
“She's wondering whether you are a lie, like most other things. And it's killing her.”
“Tell her straight. You ought to have done so from the first.”
“If she feels it as deeply as you say, it might kill her outright.”
“It won't,” said Herold. “She 's made of metal too fine. But even if it did, it were better so, for she would die knowing you to be an honest man.”
John put his elbows on the table and tugged at his hair with his big fingers. He could not resent Herold's fiery speech, for he felt that he spoke with the tongue of an archangel. Presently he raised a suffering face.
“You 're right, Wallie. It has got to be done; but I feel as if I'm taking a knife to her.”
He rose and pushed away the pile of proofs. “All this,” said he, “is going to the devil. I 've got to work through it over and over again, because I can't concentrate my mind on anything.” He walked about the room and then came down with both hands on Herold's shoulders.
“For God's sake, Wallie, tell me that you understand how it has all come about! Heaven knows she has had the purest and the highest I've had to give her. I 'm a rough, selfish brute, but for all those years she stood to me for something superhuman, a bit of God fallen on the earth, if you like. And then she came out in woman's form and walked about among us--I could n't help it. Say that you understand.”