She grovelled lower, writhing her face down into her arms.
“Only to be yours!” she moaned: “to do with as you will.”
At that at last he stooped, and dragged her forcibly to her feet. She stood before him trembling and dishevelled, and he glared at her, breathing heavily like one that had run a race.
“Before God, I never knew,” he said: “but you shame me and yourself. I will believe your story if you wish it; and what does that lead to?—that I hear you abusing the high choice of Heaven—misapplying God’s truth to the abominable sophistries of passion. Not love, but the foulest—there! I won’t shame you more. I think I have never heard such subtle blasphemy. To hope to influence me by casuistry so crooked! If you ever awakened my interest, you have lost the power for ever. Mercy! the utmost I can show you is by passing here and now out of your life——”
She broke in with an agonised cry—
“Mon Dieu! Oh, my God! Not so to stultify all I have suffered and done for your sake!”
“What you have done!” he cried fiercely. “I am no party to the vile chicanery. For your sufferings—they will cease when the fuel of this passion is withdrawn. Such fires blaze up and out in a day.”
He was cruel, no doubt—crueller than he meant to be; but his heart was wrathful over the baseness of the snare set for it.
On the echo of his voice there came the sound of approaching steps up the road. He recovered his composure on the instant.
“You will have visitors,” he said. “You had best go and make yourself fit to meet them. You will know where your interests lie. For me, the most I can do is to treat all this as a mad confidence.”