Why should you have imagined you meant more?
I gave you no reason to think so." "_No reason_ ?" It was as though the two short words were the key which unlocked the floodgates of some raging torrent.

Magda could never afterwards recall the words he used.

She only knew they beat upon her with the cruel, lancinating sharpness of hail driven by the wind.
She had treated him much as other men, evoking the love of his ardent temperament by that subtle witchery which was second nature to her and which can be such a potent weapon in the hands of a woman whose own emotions remain untouched.

And now the thwarted passion of the lover and the savage anger of a man who felt himself deceived and duped broke over her in a resistless storm--an outburst so bitter and so trenchant that for the moment she remained speechless before it, buffeted into helpless, resentful silence.

When he ceased, he had stripped her of every rag of feminine defence.
"Have you finished ?" she asked in a stifled voice.
She made no attempt to palliate matters or to refute anything he had said.