He saw his advantage. "It is not all forgotten, then, ma bien-aimée?" he whispered tenderly. "That past beautiful time is still there—there in the shrine of your pure heart. Tell me once for all, shall it return? He has forsaken you, insulted you by his mistrust; you owe him no duty; and what is it that I ask of you? The restoration of your friendship—nothing more."
The voice was soft, thrilling, full of an unspeakable pathos, and at first as she heard her brain felt dizzy and a delicious languor seemed to steal over her senses. It would be so sweet to yield, to renew in her dull prime some of the fair joys of youth. Could she not accept his friendship, for that, after all, is an every-day matter? He knew her too well to presume.
And while she pondered, with a weakness utterly new to this fair, proud woman, he stood before her, looking down upon her fixedly. Her eyes fell before his. What met them? Nothing more novel than the Indian scarf she usually wore. It had dropped from her shoulders and was hanging on her arm.
A trifle at such a time, but do not life and its issues hang sometimes on a thread? The scarf recalled Margaret to herself, for it brought another past to her mind. It had been her husband's gift to her—presented on the occasion of the little Laura's birth—and as she glanced on it there came to her mind a host of gentle memories. His words, his looks, his pride in her, the glad confidence of his strong, young manhood,—she felt them once more around her like the pale ghosts of a happy time gone by for ever; but they had been real once, warm, living flesh and blood; and with their holy power they warded off the tempter's influence.
Her first feeling was of burning shame and penitence. Was she then so absolutely weak? Should it be possible for misery and loneliness even to degrade her, to take from her that in which, through all her misery, she had rejoiced—the proud consciousness of unshaken rectitude? For even to listen to this man's blandishments was infinite degradation, the dragging down of her white soul to the base level of his.
Thoughts like these rushed tumultuously into her mind as she looked down still upon her husband's gift; and suddenly she drew herself back shivering, as one might do who had been standing unconsciously close to the edge of a great abyss.
He did not understand her gesture. The soft look was still in his eyes, and he made a movement to take her in his arms. But the new strength of her soul, born of the agonizing penitence for that one weak thought, seemed to have given to her the power she needed. She thrust out both her hands before her, pushing him back so rudely that he stumbled some steps down the sand-cliff; but he soon recovered his footing. With a look in which pleading and indignation were mingled he tried to approach her; she kept him off still.
"Leave me! leave me!" she cried "What have I said, what have I done, that you should look at me like this?" And then she covered her face with both hands. "My God! my God!" she moaned, piteously; "has even good forsaken me?"
Middlethorpe dinner-hour was over. The sun had passed its meridian height, the shadows of shrub and cliff were beginning to lengthen, and with the drawing on of evening came a moaning, sighing wind that ruffled the pale waters at their feet. It seemed an echo of Margaret's wail.