Her face answered him. Beneath his words the crimson flamed as though in crimson blood it would burst upon her cheeks—flamed in those strange pools of colour where her colour lay, and drove her white as driven snow about them—flamed and called his own blood as flame bursts out of flame. He caught her in his arms. "You are mine! What has he done to you? Mine, mine, what has he dared?"
She struggled and pressed her face away from his that approached it. "You must not! You must not! Percival, you must not!"
"Ah, your voice, your voice tells me that you are mine!" he cried: and cried it again in revulsion of triumph over the unthinkable torment that had possessed him. "Your voice tells me!" and again in savagery of heat at a thought of Rollo, "Mine—your voice tells me you are mine!"
The colour was gone from her face. She was so white and so still in his arms that he desisted the action of his face towards her, but held her close, close. There came from her lips: "No, no! you must not. It is wrong."
"How can it be wrong? You say No, but your voice tells me. I have come back for you, my Dora."
"Ah, be kind to me, Percival."
"How should I be unkind to my darling?"
He felt a tremor run through her. "You must not call me that, Percival. It should never have been. I thought you would forget."
What, had he not triumphed then? Torment came ravening back at him again like a wild thing, and with a sudden burst and clamour, shaking him where he stood, old friend wind with that old hail—or mock?—of ha! ha! ha! in his ears. He said intensely: "You thought I would forget? While I was away you thought I would forget? Dora, you never thought it!"
She stirred in his clasp to disengage herself: "No, no—before that. When we were together."