The anguish of his voice appealed to the very woman in her, and, though her face was very white, she stretched out a trembling hand and touched his arm.
"Don't speak like that. It--it hurts me," she said, and her whole body seemed to quiver as if all the springs of being were stirred. "You have never heard my story. You can't know that I, too, have been down in the depths. I have suffered all, I think, that a woman can suffer. And now, I am afraid! It is--it is so terrible a thing when one is bound and there is no hope."
It was all she could permit herself to say, but the unstudied intensity of her words was more self-revealing than any deliberate account of her unhappy married life could have been.
Malcolm stood awed before it, and knew for the first time in his life what a white thing the soul of a good woman can be, and how great are the sufferings that can rend it.
And in that moment he knew that he had not the right to take her life into his; that there were no floods deep enough to wash him clean enough to mate with this woman who had been down in the depths--and who knew.
"Don't you see I am so afraid! I could not live through it a second time. I don't know you well. And I am afraid! Let us put it away now, and let us be friends, as we have been."
"It can't be," said Malcolm simply. "If that is your final answer, I will go away out of the Glen and never set foot in it again."
"Oh, but that would be terrible! It is I who can go, for what does it matter where I live now? This is your place. These are your people. You can't leave them. You ought to be proud that you were born here and that Achree is yours. It is a place that grows into one's heart. I love it more than any place I have ever seen."
"Then keep it, stay in it! Come to me, Vivien, and bless it and me," he said, moved to an eloquence which amazed even himself. "I make no pretensions. I have not been what a man should be. But there is nothing I would not try to be and to do for your sake."
She shivered slightly, but there was wavering in her eyes.