“I mean, to live for him by living without him. That is the only way in which you can save his life.”
Her head droops again, and a shudder runs through her frame at this alternative, and Truscott, watching her, gloats over her anguish, remembering how she defied him at first.
“The conditions are not so hard as they might be,” he continues. “I only stipulate that you shall never see him again, never hold another word of communication with him, either orally, on paper, or through a third person, henceforth from this moment. On those conditions I spare his life—otherwise—well, you know the alternative.”
“May I not even write him one line of farewell?” she asks, with a look in her dry, tearless eyes that would melt a stone. Her tormentor sees it, and turns his glance away, fearing for his resolution. One word of communication might undo the whole plot. At all costs he must separate them now and for ever. So again he invokes the demon of jealousy to his aid, and goads and lashes himself to his fiend-like work.
“No. I will spare his life, but nothing else. Those are my conditions. Accept them or not. In three minutes it will be too late,” and he stands holding his watch in his hand.
Lilian is beside herself. An awful numbing sense of fatalism creeps over her. Is it to be? Ah, well, she will give her life for his, for this will kill her.
“Well? In another moment it may be too late.”
“I give in,” she says, in the same dreamy, hopeless tone.
“And you promise to hold no further communication whatever with Arthur Claverton from this day forward?”
“I promise!”