thus had I often left that door. He walked, as those do, whom the lying lips of a woman have just kissed.
III
I threatened and entreated, grinding my teeth:
"Tell me the truth!"
But with a face cold as snow, while from beneath her brows, lifted in surprise, her dark, inscrutable eyes shone passionless and mysterious as ever, she assured me:
"But I am not lying to you."
She knew that I could not prove her lie, and that all my heavy massive structure of torturing thought would crumble at one word from her, even one lying word. I waited for it—and it came forth from her lips, sparkling on the surface with the colours of truth, but dark in its innermost depths:
"I love thee! Am not I all thine?"
We were far from the town, and the snowclad plain looked in at the dark windows. Upon it was darkness, and around it was darkness, gross, motionless, silent, but the plain shone with its own latent coruscation, like the face of a corpse in the dark. In the over-heated room only one candle was burning, and on its reddening flame there appeared the white reflection of the deathlike plain.
"However sad the truth may be, I want to
