“Don’t.”
Her voice was sudden like a whip cracked.
His arms fell to his side. After all these years of absence, her stronger will lashed down his desire. He began ramblingly, shame-facedly, hinting at what he meant, not having the audacity to finish his sentences. “I had to——. I made Peter promise. When they let me out, I was thinking of you. All the time in there, for four years, I was thinking of——. Jehane, I’ve been punished enough. Isn’t it possible that——? Jehane, I love you. I always have. I always shall.”
He was aching to touch her. Through the mist of twilight that drifted through the room, he fed his eyes on every detail of this woman who had once been familiar to him. She hadn’t changed much; it was he who was altered. She also made her sternly pitiful estimate—the shrunken body, the loose-lipped, purposeless mouth, the hair growing thin and gray about the temples.
He stretched out his arms. “I love you.”
She shuddered; it was as though a man from the grave had called to her.
“Love me!” Her voice was so low that his ears were strained to catch what she said. “No. You never loved me; you weren’t strong enough for that. It was all a mistake; we never belonged to each other. If you had loved me, you wouldn’t have—— But we won’t talk about it. I’m not bitter; but we must go our own ways now.”
He was lying across the edge of the bed, threatening to reach across the gulf that spread between them. The nearer he came, the more she saw what had happened. He was old—a senile, night-robed caricature of the man she had married. In the half-light her fear of his claim on her made him ghastly.
He was moving—he was getting out of bed. She opened the door, running as she would have run from a skeleton. He was following her down the stairs. She fancied that he touched her. It seemed that he leapt through the air. Something fell. In the hall people tried to stay her. She was in the street where the plane-trees rustled; how she managed to get there she could not tell. She ran on, fearing that he still followed.
She halted for want of breath. Where was she? Lighted trams were passing. She jumped on the first, giving no thought to its direction. Not until she was safe aboard and moving, did she dare to look back.