"No!" she cried in a ringing voice. "No!" His face fell. He looked at her, startled. "No!" she said again. "I’d never believe you--not a word you said. I won’t forget! I’ll _never_ forget, and I’ll never forgive what you’ve done. You’re a liar! You’re a beast! I hate you!" CHAPTER THIRTEEN I Angelica was working in the back parlour the next afternoon with Sillon when Devery brought her in a letter. She smiled ironically and tucked it into her blouse, for she knew the writing. "I wonder how he’ll be this time!" she reflected. "You can never tell. Maybe in an awful rage, or sad, or making love. Well, it doesn’t matter to me now. I’ve finished with him! But I was really nearly gone last night." She had stopped short in her work and sat looking vacantly before her. "I don’t know why I’m such a fool about that man. I don’t know what it is about him!" II She didn’t trouble to open his letter until she was ready to go home. Then, alone for a minute, she pulled it out and opened it, half sadly. "No!" she cried suddenly. "No! I don’t believe it." "What is it?" Devery called out from the next room. "Nothing!" said Angelica, with stiff lips. She hid the letter in her blouse in terror at the idea of its being seen. Then she was forced to bring it out again, to read it, to make sure. Wanton, without a heart! You thing from the gutter, willing to give your body to any man, while you keep your cold and poisonous heart to yourself, for your own sordid aims! I swear to you I will never let you destroy Eddie as you have me. It would be an outrage to call you sister, to permit you to bear our name. I would rather die. And I shall die. I have enlisted in the army. I shall soon be sent to France, and I shall find Eddie there and tell him your little history. Then I shall die. Nothing on earth can stop me. It will be the supreme moment of my life when I tell Eddie, when I see his face, and know that your shameless ends are frustrated--when I know that you are really ruined. "He won’t do it!" she tried to reassure herself. "He’s always making threats. He wouldn’t really do anything that might harm himself." But she knew that Vincent didn’t always act from self-interest. His passions were very apt to overwhelm him, and malice was one of the strongest of his passions. He would enjoy exquisitely telling the wretched tale to Eddie. For three months she didn’t draw a free breath. She tried to dismiss her terror from her mind. She said to herself, resolutely: "Don’t borrow trouble!" "Don’t worry about what may never happen!" "Don’t cross your bridges before you come to them," and all sorts of tags from her mother’s store. She faced Devery and Sillon every morning with the same hardy good-humour. She was dutiful and severe at home, as had become her custom, and to no living soul did she give the smallest hint of what she was enduring.