You see, I have learned something in these two years. It is
useless. No one can stop me now."
"No one?"
He smiled, and for the first time she saw a sneer disfigure his lips.
"Not even you, Miss Cary. You have done a great deal with me--enough
perhaps to justify your wildest hopes--but you have touched the limits
of your powers and of my gullibility. Or did you think there were no
limits?"
"I do not recognize you when you talk like that!" she exclaimed.
"That is surprising, seeing that you have made me what I am," he
answered. Then he made a quick gesture of apology. "Forgive me, that
sounded like a reproach or a complaint. I make neither. That is not my
purpose."
"And yet you have the right," she said, drawing a deep breath, "you
have every right, Nehal. It does not matter what the others did to
you. I know that does not count an atom in comparison to my
responsibilities. You trusted me as you trusted no one else, and I
deceived you. So you have the right to hate me as you hate no one
else. And yet--is it not something, does it not mitigate my fault a
little, that I deceived myself far, far more than I ever deceived
you?" He raised his eyebrows. There was mockery in the movement, and
she went on, desperately resolute: "I played at loving you, Nehal. I
played a comedy with you for my own purposes. And one day it ceased to
be a comedy. I did not know it. I did not know what was driving me to
tell the truth, and reveal myself to you in the ugliest light I could.
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