"István, after all the sacrifices I have made, you cannot have forgotten your promises. You told me last year that I must wait. I have been patient, and I have waited. I have lived only on the thought of you, on the hope of being your wife some day. I have given up everything. I have risked my fair fame. I have deprived my child of its father – and all, all for you. Are you going to tell me that I have done it all in vain?"
She uttered these words, so full of passion, slowly, pausing often, and giving full weight to each syllable. As she spoke, she sat up from her reclining posture; the lamplight struck red and green flashes from the rubies and emeralds on her neck.
"I have not repented one sacrifice of all those which I have made. You are not going to abandon me, now that I am free?"
"Stop this talk, in God's name!" cried István, starting up from his chair with a fierce flush on his forehead. "Do you want to hunt me down? Do you want to drive me to distraction? A man's patience can be tried too far, I tell you."
This woman's lamentations were becoming decidedly inconvenient. They required to be cut short at any price. She trembled under the glance which he shot towards her; and, womanlike, she began to undo what she had been doing.
For more than a minute she sat collecting her thoughts; then she spoke –
"Forgive me, István, – I have been wrong; you must be right. I was wrong to doubt you."
Did not even this confidence touch him with pity, or awaken some faint qualm of conscience? No; for there is a sort of cruelty which springs, not from the pleasures of seeing others suffer, but only from a sort of mental instability; and in this way István could be cruel. The cruelty which springs from hardness of nature has more chance of being softened than that which comes from a lightness of nature – for a hard nature need not necessarily be a shallow one; while here there was no possibility of stirring the depths, because the depths themselves were awanting. Therefore István was capable of fiery, though not of lastingly tender passions, and the impression of the moment, though paramount while it lasted, was swept away by the impression of the next. A woman's beauty was the only language which could make him feel an approach to pity. Passionate appeal and heartrending prayers fell upon indifferent ears: but sighs could move him – when they were breathed by glowing lips; and tears could touch him – falling from beautiful eyes.
Tryphosa's beauty had lost almost the last vestige of power over him, for he was surfeited with it. There was too much of it, and it was given too profusely; the quality was too rich, and the flavour too intense. Once he had wished for her love ardently; but now that she had freed herself and laid it at his feet, he felt his ardour strangely cooled. The coveted good lost half its value when thus pressed upon him.
He had thought that the last vestige of that power was gone; but he would not have been István Tolnay if the sight of that beautiful pleading figure had not calmed his anger, though it could not touch his pity. Her hands were clasped and raised towards him; diamond-drops glistened in her beseeching eyes, shining brighter than the fire of the jewels on her neck and arms. She was too beautiful to be resisted, – not too eloquent, or too loving, or too blindly de-
