And suddenly Bianca understood. This was the meaning of the packed
trunk, the dismantled room. He was going to take her, after all!
In the turmoil of this discovery two words alone escaped her:
"I see!"
They were enough. The girl's face at once lost all trace of its look
of desperate calculation, brightened, became guilty, and from guilty
sullen.
The antagonism of all the long past months was now declared between
these two--Bianca's pride could no longer conceal, the girl's
submissiveness no longer obscure it. They stood like duellists, one on
each side of the trunk--that common, brown-Japanned, tin trunk, corded
with rope. Bianca looked at it.
"You," she said, "and he? Ha, ha; ha, ha! Ha, ha, ha!"
Against that cruel laughter--more poignant than a hundred homilies on
caste, a thousand scornful words--the little model literally could
not stand; she sat down in the low chair where she had evidently been
sitting to watch the street. But as a taste of blood will infuriate a
hound, so her own laughter seemed to bereave Bianca of all restraint.
"What do you imagine he's taking you for, girl? Only out of pity! It's
not exactly the emotion to live on in exile. In exile--but that you do
not understand!"
The little model staggered to her feet again. Her face had grown
painfully red.
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