He kissed her hair, holding her closer.
Helen, starting violently, thrust him away with all her strength, and though blissfully aware only of his own interpretation, Gerald half released her, keeping her only by his clasp of her wrists.
His kiss had confirmed her incredible suspicion. 'You insult me!' she said. 'And after what I told you! What intolerable assumption! What intolerable arrogance! What baseness!'
Her eyes seemed to burn their eyelids; her face was transformed in its wild, blanched indignation.
'But I love you,' said Gerald, and he looked at her with a candour of conviction too deep for pleading.
'You love me!' Helen repeated. She could have wept for sheer fury and humiliation had not her scornful concentration on him been too intent to admit the flooding image of herself—mocked and abased by this travesty—which might have brought the fears. 'I think that you are mad.'
'But I do love you,' Gerald reiterated. 'I've been mad, if you like; but I'm quite sane now.'
'You are a simpleton,' was Helen's reply; she could find no other word for his fatuity.
'Be as cruel as you like; I know I deserve it,' said Gerald.