'Again there are two sides to the question, Mrs Lammle. What do you
pretend to believe?'

'So you first deceive me and then insult me!' cries the lady, with a
heaving bosom.

'Not at all. I have originated nothing. The double-edged question was
yours.'

'Was mine!' the bride repeats, and her parasol breaks in her angry hand.

His colour has turned to a livid white, and ominous marks have come to
light about his nose, as if the finger of the very devil himself had,
within the last few moments, touched it here and there. But he has
repressive power, and she has none.

'Throw it away,' he coolly recommends as to the parasol; 'you have made
it useless; you look ridiculous with it.'

Whereupon she calls him in her rage, 'A deliberate villain,' and so
casts the broken thing from her as that it strikes him in falling. The
finger-marks are something whiter for the instant, but he walks on at
her side.

She bursts into tears, declaring herself the wretchedest, the most
deceived, the worst-used, of women. Then she says that if she had
the courage to kill herself, she would do it. Then she calls him vile
impostor. Then she asks him, why, in the disappointment of his base
speculation, he does not take her life with his own hand, under the