His sullen misery made me take trembling resolution by the throat and vacillate no longer. I lied firmly, though my voice had a strange sound in my ears.
“Yes I can—I have already begun to love you. You have shown yourself worthy of any woman’s love, Maurice, and who am I—?”
A cold hand gripped my heart; my soul cried out to me in its despair. He stared at me amazedly for a moment, then caught me by the wrists, trying to look into my eyes. But I dared not let him see that stricken, dying thing.
“Is it true?—do you mean it?”
“Yes,” I said suffocating, and sank half fainting to my bed. He still held my hands but he came no nearer, and for a moment a gleam of light radiated through the darkness; a little radiant bird of hope flew through my mind. Could it be that he no longer cared for me—that I had killed desire in him—that he would be content to go on for ever as we had lived, and never require of me this terrible immolation of body and soul? The thought unsealed my closed eyes, and I looked at him keenly. But what I saw staring in his eyes was not distaste nor hatred, but something no woman wishes to see except in the eyes of the man she adores. The hour for sacrifice had struck. I put up my arms and wound them round his neck.
“Kiss me, Maurice,” I whispered, and drew him down beside me. He flung his arms about me and held me tight.
“Is it true? Do you mean it? You are going to give yourself to me at last—at last?”
“Yes—”
“When I come back?”
“No—” I tried to say a word that my stiff lips refused—“when you will.”