“I could not live with you. I think you would kill me. I said to poor Arthur this afternoon what I believe of you—that you are selfish, and false, and hard as a stone. I could not love a woman of whom I could think—of whom I had been forced to say—that.”
Compunctions rained upon him—sharp arrows. Her mute, white face appealed—if only to the long devotion, the long tenderness of years.
The crucial moment was past, and the upwelling tenderness, devotion, called to him to hurry her away from it, and support her under his own most necessary cruelty.
His voice broke in a stammer as he said, taking her hands—“How can I tell you how I hate myself for saying this?—it is hideous—it is mean to say.”
And Camelia said nothing, seemed merely to await, in a frozen stupor, another blow. He could not see in her now the lying jilt of yesterday.
“Don’t think of me again as I’ve been this afternoon. Forget it, won’t you?” he urged; “I am going away to-morrow—and—you will get over it, be able to see me again—some day, as the good old friend who never wanted to be cruel—no, I swear it, Camelia. You must go now; you will let me order the trap? You will let me drive you home?”
She had drawn her hands away; in the dim room her eyes met his—bereft, astonished.
“You will let me drive you?” Perior repeated with some confusion.
“No, I will walk,” she said, hardly audibly.
“The five miles back? It is too far—too late.” He looked away from her, too much touched by those astonished eyes.