“Yes. I tell you, for I cannot injure you.”
“You think so now,” she said, calmly; “but in a few days when the first shock has worn away, your old desire, your old thirst for justice, will come back, and you will do then what you shrink from doing now. It has been a long struggle. Let it end. If you do not give me up to justice, I will give myself up.”
She looked at him and a light that did not seem to be of earth came over her face.
“Kenelm,” she said, “I must ask you one favor. Do not let my story be made public until I am condemned.”
“Have you, then, no wish to live, Hermione?”
“None!” she replied, and the despair on her face was plainly written. He knew that she spoke the truth.
“It is an awful doom,” he said, rather to himself than to her—“a terrible doom! Would to Heaven I could save you from it. Are you ill, Hermione?”
For the last remnant of color had faded from her lips, even the light left her eyes.
“Are you ill?” he repeated. “Speak to me, Hermione.”
“No; I am not ill. It was only a strange fluttering here at my heart, as though it had stopped beating. Kenelm, help me to realize my doom!”