"Dearest,—should I have been less sudden?" Sir Hugh was beside her, leaning over her, reasoning, questioning, only just not caressing her. "It's not as if we didn't know each other, Amabel: we have been strangers, in a sense;—yet, through it all—all these years—haven't we felt near?—Ah darling, you can't deny it;—you can't deny you love me." His arm was pressing her.
"Please—" she prayed again, and he moved his hand further away, beyond her crouching shoulder.
"You are such a little nun that you can't bear to be loved?—Is that it? But you'll have to learn again. You are more than a nun: you are a beautiful woman: young; wonderfully young. It's astonishing how like a girl you are."—Sir Hugh seemed to muse over a fact that allured. "And however like a nun you've lived—you can't deny that you love me."
"You haven't loved me," Amabel at last could say.
He paused, but only for a moment. "Perhaps not: but," his voice had now the delicate aptness that she remembered, "how could I believe that there was a chance for me? How could I think you could ever come to care, like this, when you had left me—you know—Amabel."
She was silent, her mind whirling. And his nearness, as he leaned over her, was less ecstasy than terror. It was as if she only knew her love, her sacred love again, when he was not near.
"It's quite of late that I've begun to wonder," said Sir Hugh. "Stupid ass of course, not to have seen the jewel I held in my hand. But you've only showed me the nun, you darling. I knew you cared, but I never knew how much.—I ought to have had more self-conceit, oughtn't I?"
"I have cared. You have been all that is beautiful.—I have cared more than for anything.—But—oh, it could not have been this.—This would have killed me with shame," said Amabel.
"With shame? Why, you strange angel?"
"Can you ask?" she said in a trembling voice.