"They're getting on," he said. "Lucky beggars. It's all plain sailing for them."
There was a note of infinite regret in his voice, a sadness that stabbed Stella Fyfe like a lance. She did not dare look at him. Something rose chokingly in her throat. She felt and fought against a slow welling of tears to her eyes. Before she sensed that she was betraying herself, Monohan was holding both her hands fast between his own, gripping them with a fierce, insistent pressure, speaking in a passionate undertone.
"Why should we have to beat our heads against a stone wall like this?" he was saying wildly. "Why couldn't we have met and loved and been happy, as we could have been? It was fated to happen. I felt it that day I dragged you out of the lake. It's been growing on me ever since. I've struggled against it, and it's no use. It's something stronger than I am. I love you, Stella, and it maddens me to see you chafing in your chains. Oh, my dear, why couldn't it have been different?"
"You mustn't talk like that," she protested weakly. "You mustn't. It isn't right."
"I suppose it's right for you to live with a man you don't love, when your heart's crying out against it?" he broke out. "My God, do you think I can't see? I don't have to see things; I can feel them. I know you're the kind of woman who goes through hell for her conceptions of right and wrong. I honor you for that, dear. But, oh, the pity of it. Why should it have to be? Life could have held so much that is fine and true for you and me together. For you do care, don't you?"
"What difference does that make?" she whispered. "What difference can it make? Oh, you mustn't tell me these things, I mustn't listen. I mustn't."
"But they're terribly, tragically true," Monohan returned. "Look at me, Stella. Don't turn your face away, dear. I wouldn't do anything that might bring the least shadow on you. I know the pitiful hopelessness of it. You're fettered, and there's no apparent loophole to freedom. I know it's best for me to keep this locked tight in my heart, as something precious and sorrowful. I never meant to tell you. But the flesh isn't always equal to the task the spirit imposes."
She did not answer him immediately, for she was struggling for a grip on herself, fighting back an impulse to lay her head against him and cry her agony out on his breast. All the resources of will that she possessed she called upon now to still that tumult of emotion that racked her. When she did speak, it was in a hard, strained tone. But she faced the issue squarely, knowing beyond all doubt what she had to face.
"Whether I care or not isn't the question," she said. "I'm neither little enough nor prudish enough to deny a feeling that's big and clean. I see no shame in that. I'm afraid of it—if you can understand that. But that's neither here nor there. I know what I have to do. I married without love, with my eyes wide open, and I have to pay the price. So you must never talk to me of love. You mustn't even see me, if it can be avoided. It's better that way. We can't make over our lives to suit ourselves—at least I can't. I must play the game according to the only rules I know. We daren't—we mustn't trifle with this sort of a feeling. With you—footloose, and all the world before you—it'll die out presently."
"No," he flared. "I deny that. I'm not an impressionable boy. I know myself."