"For your sake? You care what I do, then: Lettice, you care for me? Tell me that you love me—tell me, at last!"
She was silent for a moment, and he felt that the hand which rested on his own fluttered as if it would take itself away. Was she offended? Would she withdraw the mute caress of that soft pressure? Breathlessly he waited. If she took her hand away, he thought that he should almost cease to hope.
But the hand settled once more into its place. It even tightened its pressure upon his fingers as she replied—
"I love you with all my heart," she said; "and it is just because I love you that I want you to go away."
With a quick turn of his wrist he seized the hand that had hitherto lain on his, and carried it to his lips. They looked into each other's eyes with the long silent look which is more expressive even than a kiss. Soul draws very near to soul when the eyes of man and woman meet as theirs met then. The lips did not meet, but Alan's face was very close to hers. When the pause had lasted so long that Lettice's eyelids drooped, and the spell of the look was broken, he spoke again.
"Why should I go away? Why should the phantom of a dead past divide us? We belong to one another, you and I. Think of what life might mean to us, side by side, hand in hand, working, striving together, you the stronger, giving me some of your strength, I ready to give you the love you need—the love you have craved for—the love that you have won! Lettice, Lettice, neither God nor man can divide us now!"
"Hush! you are talking wildly," she answered, in a very gentle tone. "Listen to me, Alan. There is one point in which you are wrong. You speak of a dead past. But the past is not dead, it lives for you still in the person of—your wife."
"And you think that she should stand in our way? After all that she has done? Can any law, human or divine, bind me to her now? Surely her own acts have set me free. Lettice, my darling, do not be blinded by conventional views of right and wrong. I know that if we had loved each other and she had been a woman of blameless life, I should not be justified in asking you to sacrifice for me all that the world holds dear; but think of the life she has led—the shame she has brought upon me and upon herself. Good God! is anyone in the world narrow-minded enough and base enough to think that I can still be bound to her?"
"No, Alan; but your course is clear. You must set yourself free."
"Seek my remedy in the courts? Have all the miserable story bandied about from lip to lip, be branded as a wretched dupe of a wicked woman on whom he had already tried to revenge himself? That is what the world would say. And your name would be brought forward, my dearest; it would be hopeless to keep it in the background now. Your very goodness and sweetness would be made the basis of an accusation.... I could not bear it, I could not see you pilloried, even if I could bear the shame of it myself."