His hand caressed her hair, slipped around her neck. "You nun; you saint.—Does that girlish peccadillo still haunt you?"
"Don't—oh don't—call it that—call me that!—"
"Call you a saint? But what else are you?—a beautiful saint. What other woman could have lived the life you've lived? It's wonderful."
"Don't. I cannot bear it."
"Can't bear to be called a saint? Ah, but, you see, that's just why you are one."
She could not speak. She could not even say the only answering word: a sinner. Her hands were like leaden weights upon her brows. In the darkness she heard her heart beating heavily, and tried and tried to catch some fragment of meaning from her whirling thoughts.
And as if her self-condemnation were a further enchantment, her husband murmured: "It makes you all the lovelier that you should feel like that. It makes me more in love with you than ever: but forget it now. Let me make you forget it. I can.—Darling, your beautiful hair. I remember it;—it is as beautiful as ever.—I remember it;—it fell to your knees.—Let me see your face, Amabel."
She was shuddering, shrinking from him.—"Oh—no—no.—Do you not see—not feel—that it is impossible—"
"Impossible! Why?—My darling, you are my wife;—and if you love me?—"
They were whirling impossibilities; she could see none clearly but one that flashed out for her now in her extremity of need, bright, ominous, accusing. She seized it:—"Augustine."