That flush was unnatural, it was evident. She had wasted away, too. He could see that. She who used to have such a noble, full throat; and her breathing came all too quick.
"Come, my darling," he went on, "let me see you to bed myself. No one, you know, can look after you as I do. I should not have trusted you away from me all this time. Come, come, we must let this hair down to ease the poor head—your golden hair, Rosamond. It is not the first time I have unbound it—eh, my love?"
"Your golden hair, Rosamond..." whispered the voice in her heart. What sort of a woman was she that another should dare use these sacred words of love to her? She fixed her piteous eyes upon Sir Arthur, as if, by the sheer intensity of dread, she could keep him from her. But he stretched out his arms.
She shrank, flattening herself against the wall, one arm raised across her brow as though to protect her hair.
"One would almost think you were shy—afraid of me," said he, jocularly, while his embrace hovered over her.
"Once there was fear of me in your eyes..."
"Don't touch me!" she shrieked. "Oh, your horrible hands!"
There fell instantly between them the silence of the irremediable deed.
Rosamond had at last torn across the interwoven fabric of their two lives; the ugly rending sound of the parting hung in the air. These gaping edges no seam could ever join again. To the woman came a fierce realisation of freedom, a sweeping anger at the petty shackles that had held her so long.
Sir Arthur stepped back, his arms falling by his side. He, poor man, felt as if the good old world, of which he was such an ornament, had ceased to be solid beneath his feet.