He answered me. “I think we two have joined our lives. . . . But the thing that took us was a sort of madness.”
I nodded. “All passion,” I said, “is madness.” Then I fell into a doubting of those words.
“Why did we do these things?” he said, turning to her suddenly.
Her hands were clasped under her chin, her eyes downcast.
“We _had_ to,” she said, with her old trick of inadequate expression.
“Willie,” she cried with a sudden directness, with her eyes appealing to me, “I didn’t mean to treat you badly—indeed I didn’t. I kept thinking of you—and of father and mother, all the time. Only it didn’t seem to move me. It didn’t move me not one bit from the way I had chosen.”
“Something seemed to have hold of me,” she admitted. “It’s all so unaccountable. . . .”
Verrall’s fingers played on the cloth for a space. Then he turned his face to me again.
“Something said ‘Take her.’ Everything. It was a raging desire—for her. I don’t know. Everything contributed to that—or counted for nothing. You———”
I looked at Nettie. “You never told him about me?” I said, feeling, as it were, a sting out of the old time.
Verrall answered for her. “No. But things dropped; I saw you that night, my instincts were all awake. I knew it was you.”
“You triumphed over me? . . . If I could I would have triumphed over you,” I said. “But go on!”
“Everything conspired to make it the finest thing in life. It had an air of generous recklessness. It meant mischief, it might mean failure in that life of politics and affairs, for which I was trained, which it was my honor to follow. That made it all the finer. It meant ruin or misery for Nettie. That made it all the finer. No sane or decent man would have approved of what we did. That made it more splendid than ever. I had all the advantages of position and used them basely. That mattered not at all.”
“Yes,” I said; “it is true. And the same dark wave that lifted you, swept me on to follow. With that revolver—and blubbering with hate. And the word to you, Nettie, what was it? ‘Give?’ Hurl yourself down the steep?”
Nettie’s hands fell upon the table. “I can’t tell what it was,” she said, speaking bare-hearted straight to me. “Girls aren’t trained as men are trained to look into their minds. I can’t see it yet. All sorts of mean little motives were there—over and above the ‘must.’ Mean motives. I kept thinking of his clothes.” She smiled—a flash of brightness at Verrall. “I kept thinking of being like a lady and sitting in an hotel—with men like butlers waiting. It’s the dreadful truth, Willie. Things as mean as that! Things meaner than that!”