The words forced themselves out with something of a snarl. His lips seemed drawn back, and his eyes glowed like those of a cornered wild beast, as he watched her troubled face.
“But it is not! No, you could never have done such a thing—you! You could never have been a cold-blooded midnight murderer, and robber. No, Roden, I will not believe it!”
“But you do believe it. You believed it from the first, because that half-start away from me when our eyes first met this morning meant nothing short of belief. That little act of shrinking fixed my mind irrevocably—reft a gulf between us never to be passed in this life. A cold-blooded midnight murderer—and robber—and robber!” he repeated; and now indeed the expression of his face was more than ever like that of a dangerous animal at bay. “And you believe that!”
“But say it is not true! Oh, Roden, say it! Your bare word will be sufficient to restore me, to restore us both, to the blissful heaven we were in before!” she adjured, her voice quivering with anguish.
“Nothing on earth will ever restore that. You killed the possibility that little lightning-like moment when you half turned away from me, looked at me with doubting horror. Now I will say nothing—nothing, you understand. Form your own opinion and hold it, for henceforth it can be nothing to me. We disappear out of each other’s lives for ever.”
Mona made no reply; her face half averted, her lips compressed, her beautiful form erect and rigid. Why was he so terribly strong, with a strength of purpose that was almost appalling, demoniacal, scarcely human in its unparalleled inflexibility? Why did he give no sign of softness, of yielding? She had, as he said, involuntarily, though half-unconsciously, shrunk from him. That was enough. Never again would she see those eyes gladden to the light of hers, never again hear the love tone of that voice. And yet, amid the awful agony of her loss and its realisation, there was still room for that same feeling of shrinking as from the perpetrator of a hideous and sordid crime; and like the mocking whoop of demons in her ears came that cutting, stinging, gibing refrain—the echo of his words, spoken there:—
“Nothing lasts! Nothing lasts!”
She had reached that point where mental anguish becomes physical pain, without in any way losing itself therein. Her brain seemed bursting, her heart refusing to beat. The climax came. She sank down in swooning unconsciousness.
Even then that human being turned to iron repressed the step which he had made towards her—repressed it with a shiver, but still repressed it. Not his the right to touch her—he from whom she had shrunk as from a murderer and midnight robber. Then another thought struck him.