“Don’t say that,” he replied. “One changes.”
“Is that a taunt?”
“Not a taunt—a reminder.”
She rose and came to him, walking down the long room, past the somber illuminations of the windows, straight to him. They stood face to face, bathed in the unearthly light. All their deep antagonism was there between them, almost a hatred, and the love that swords clashed over.
“You do not believe that of me,” she said.
He was ready and unfaltering, and was able to smile at her, a bright, odd smile. “I believe it of any one.”
It was love that eyed him—love more stern, more relentless in its silence than if she had spoken it, and never had she been so near as when, sending her clarion of open warfare across the abyss, she said, “I will never change—to you.”
The words, the look,—a look of solemn defiance,—shattered forever the palace of pretence that they had dwelt in for so long. Till now, it might have stood for them. In its rainbow chambers they might still have smiled and sorrowed and eluded each other, only glanced through the glittering casements at the dark realities outside; but when the word of truth was spoken, casements, chambers, turrets, fell together and reality rushed in. She had spoken the word. After that it was impossible to pretend anything.
Gavan, among the wreck, had grown pale; but he kept his smile fixed, even while he, too, spoke the new language of reality.