Hatred and love can teach us more in a moment than the
experience of a lifetime; for through either of them we see ourselves
face to face. This hatred made Anna Agar in twenty-four hours, and the
woman thus created went through a lifetime unchanged.
Michael went towards the bell.
"I am going to ring," he said, "for your maid."
"Twice," she muttered in the same vague way.
He obeyed her, ringing twice.
Presently the woman came.
"Your mistress," said Michael in a low voice to her at the door, "has
been suddenly seized with faintness. I leave her to you."
Without looking round he passed through the doorway and out into his own
self-seeking life. But Anna Agar's revenge began from that moment. To a
man of his nature, in whose veins ran the taint of a semi-superstitious
Oriental blood, there was a nameless terror in the hatred of a human
being, however helpless. Surely the hell of the coward will be a twilight
land of vague shadowy dangers ever approaching and receding.
In such a land Seymour Michael moved for some months, until he returned
to India; and there, in the daily round of a new life, he gradually
learnt to shake off the past.
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