I took you by the shoulder
only when you began to mutter words I could not understand. Have you not
heard, then, and do you know nothing?"
"Nothing of what you said. What is it? Tell again if you want me to
know."
He took her by the shoulder and led her unresisting to the front of the
verandah into a stronger light. She wrung her hands with such an
appearance of grief that he began to be alarmed.
"Speak," he said. "You made noise enough to wake even dead men. And yet
nobody living came," he added to himself in an uneasy whisper. "Are you
mute? Speak!" he repeated.
In a rush of words which broke out after a short struggle from her
trembling lips she told him the tale of Nina's love and her own jealousy.
Several times he looked angrily into her face and told her to be silent;
but he could not stop the sounds that seemed to him to run out in a hot
stream, swirl about his feet, and rise in scalding waves about him,
higher, higher, drowning his heart, touching his lips with a feel of
molten lead, blotting out his sight in scorching vapour, closing over his
head, merciless and deadly. When she spoke of the deception as to Dain's
death of which he had been the victim only that day, he glanced again at
her with terrible eyes, and made her falter for a second, but he turned
away directly, and his face suddenly lost all expression in a stony stare
far away over the river.
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