"Augustine? What of him?" Sir Hugh's voice had an edge to it.
"He could not bear it. It would break his heart."
"What has he to do with it? He isn't all your life:—you've given him most of it already."
"He is, he must be, all my life, except that beautiful part that you were:—that you are:—oh you will stay my friend!"—
"I'll stay your lover, your determined lover and husband, Amabel. Darling, you are ridiculous, enchanting—with your barriers, your scruples." The fear, the austerity, he felt in her fanned his ardour to flame. His arms once more went round her; he murmured words of lover-like pleading, rapturous, wild and foolish. And, though her love, her sacred love for him was there, his love for her was a nightmare to her now. She had lost herself, and it was as though she lost him, while he pleaded thus. And again and again she answered, resolute and tormented:—"No: no: never—never. Do not speak so to me.—Do not—I beg of you."
Suddenly he released her. He straightened himself, and moved away from her a little. Someone had entered.
Amabel dropped her hands and raised her eyes at last. Augustine stood before them.
Augustine had on still his long travelling coat; his cap, beaded with raindrops, was in his hand; his yellow hair was ruffled. He had entered hastily. He stood there looking at them, transfixed, yet not astonished. He was very pale.
For some moments no one of them spoke. Sir Hugh did not move further from his wife's side: he was neither anxious nor confused; but his face wore an involuntary scowl.
The deep confusion was Amabel's. But her husband had released her; no longer pleaded; and with the lifting of that dire oppression the realities of her life flooded her almost with relief. It was impossible, this gay, this facile, this unseemly love, but, as she rejected and put it from her, the old love was the stronger, cherished the more closely, in atonement and solicitude, the man shrunk from and repulsed. And in all the deep confusion, before her son,—that he should find her so, almost in her husband's arms,—a flash of clarity went through her mind as she saw them thus confronted. Deeper than ever between her and Augustine was the challenge of her love and his hatred; but it was that sacred love that now needed safeguards; she could not feel it when her husband was near and pleading; Augustine was her refuge from oppression.