In a moment Elizabeth looked up; with a great effort she conquered her tears. She went to Gerard and put her hand on his arm. The face she raised to his was white, trembling in a pathetic appeal. The tears still glistened on her long lashes, there was a tremulous sweetness in her great dark eyes, in the quivering lines about her pale lips. "Julian," she said, "if I'm not—not worthy of your trust—not worthy of your love, even"—she faltered—"if I had deceived you—were deceiving you still"——she paused and looked him in the face with an agonized questioning.
"Yes?"—Gerard's hoarse voice urged her on.—"If you were deceiving me? It isn't—it can't be true, but if you were?"——
"If I were," she went on, steadily, "if I had kept one thing from you—against my will—oh, God knows! sorely against my will"—her voice broke—"if it had been a weight on my mind day and night—if I had longed to tell you and had tried to do it and always—my courage failed me, and—and—if at last—at last, I told you—would you—think me so very much to blame, couldn't you—forgive?"—Her voice again faltered piteously, the last word was barely audible.
He broke away from her and took two or three turns up and down the room, breathing heavily, like a man who had been running. "Tell me what this secret is?" he broke out, fiercely, pausing suddenly in front of her. "How can I tell if——I could forgive, till I know what it is?"
Again the silence. Elizabeth's white lips tried, apparently in vain, to form an answer. The courage which a moment before had possessed her, seemed to shrivel up and die away, before that fierce light in his eyes.
"Tell me," he repeated, inexorably, "what it is."
She put out her hand suddenly with a pleading gesture. "Ah, let us first see the Old Year out together," she murmured, "as we planned. I should like to feel that you loved me till—the very end of it. You may not—afterwards. It won't be long. See—it's nearly time." She glanced up at the clock. It was ticking faster now, as it seemed, and steadily, the hour hand well towards midnight.
Elizabeth went to the window and flung it open. The current of cold air which flooded the room seemed to give her relief; she leaned out as far as she could, inhaling it in long, fevered gasps. Gerard followed and stood behind her, in an agony of impatience, distraught by a hundred incongruous, terrible suggestions. The prolonged suspense seemed, in his over-wrought state, a very refinement of cruelty, yet some instinct kept him silent, left to her the mastery of the situation.
In the street there was unwonted stir and bustle. A crowd assembled to greet the New Year. Small boys, whose horns made the night hideous, pranced about like uncouth imps of darkness; the street-lamps, as they flickered, cast a weird, uncertain light on the snow-covered ground. But the moon, riding overhead, shone peacefully, and myriads of stars studded the wintry sky. Down towards the Battery one could hear, above all coarser sounds, the chimes of Old Trinity ringing faint but true.
Elizabeth's eyes were riveted upon St. George's clock, which stood out, not many blocks away, above the roofs of intervening houses. Her lips moved, but no sound came; one hand grasped convulsively the curtain behind her. To Gerard as he watched her those fifteen minutes before the New Year were the longest of his life.