"When I became a villain?" He smiled ironically. "Excuse me. Go on,
please."

"I was a girl, a happy girl. You killed me. I did not change. Death is
different. * * * But why have you come to speak of this to me? It was ages
ago. Resurrections are a mistake, believe me." She was composed and
deliberate now. Her nerve had all come back. There had been one swift wave
of the feeling that once flooded her girl's heart. It had passed and left
her with the remembrance of her wrongs and the thought of unhappy
years--through all which she had smiled, at what cost, before the world!
Come what would, he should never know that, even now, the man he once was
remained as the memory of a beautiful dead thing--not this man come to her
like a ghost.

"I always believed you," he answered quietly, "and I see no reason to
change."

"In that case we need say no more," she said, opening her red parasol and
stepping slightly forward into the sunshine as if to go.

There ran into his face a sudden flush. She was harder, more cruel, than
he had thought were possible to any woman. "Wait," he said angrily, and
put out his hand as if to stop her. "By heaven, you shall!"

"You are sudden and fierce," she rejoined coldly. "What do you wish me to
say? What I did not finish--that southerners love altogether or--hate
altogether?"

His face became like stone. At last, scarce above a whisper, he said: "Am