She turned upon him. “You laugh—you have no idea what it is to me! I think of you day and night, I have longed to have you in my arms—on my heart. No, don’t touch me; it is only that I won’t have you believe that I don’t know what love is, that I don’t love you. Why, once at Port aux Pins, I walked miles at night because I was so mad with jealousy; and I found you playing whist! If I could only have known beforehand—if I could only have seen you once, just once, Ferdie might have done what he chose with Cicely; I shouldn’t have stirred!”
“Yes, you would,” said Paul.
“No, I shouldn’t have stirred; you might as well know me as I am. What I despise myself for now is, that I haven’t the force to make an end of it, to relieve you of the thought of me—at least as some one living. But as long as you are alive, Paul—” She looked at him with her eyes full of tears.
“You don’t know what you are talking about,” said Paul, sternly. “You will live, and as my wife; we will be married here at Romney to-morrow.”
“Would you really marry me here?” said Eve, the light of joy coming into her wan face.
“It’s a tumble-down old place, I know. But won’t it do to be married in?”
“Oh, it is so much harder when you seem to forget,—when for the moment you really do forget! But of course I know that it could not last.”
She moved away a step or two. “If I should marry you, you would hate me. Not in the beginning. But it would come. For Ferdie was your brother, and I did kill him; nothing can alter these facts—not even love. At first you wouldn’t remember; then, gradually, he would come back to you; you would think of the time when you were boys together, and you would be sorry. Then, gradually, you would realize that I killed him; whenever I came near you, you would see—” Her voice broke, but she hurried on. “You said I was brave to do it, and I was. You said it was heroic, and it was. Yet all the same, he was your brother; and I killed him. In defence of Cicely and the baby? Nothing makes any difference. I killed him, and you would end by hating me. Yet I shouldn’t be able to leave you; once your wife, I know that I should stay on, even if it were only to fold your clothes,—to touch them; to pick up the burnt match-ends you had dropped, and your newspapers; to arrange the chairs as you like to have them. I should be weak, weak—I should follow you about. How you would loathe me! It would become to you a hell.”
“I’ll take care of that,” said Paul; “I’ll see to my own hells; at present I’m thinking of something very different. We will be married to-day, and not wait for to-morrow; I will take you away to-night.”