“What?”
“That you are mine whatever happens. That nothing shall stand between us.”
She hesitated, panic-stricken. All the responsibility of such selfishness as he asked for weighed upon her with a sudden burden.
“We have decided——” she began.
“No, but swear it——”
Then his mood changed as strangely as it appeared to have come upon him. He clasped her waist with his arm again, and dropped his head heavily against her breast. She almost staggered under his massive weight, even though he held her.
“No, I will ask nothing of you,” he said thickly. “I will trust you to give me more than I deserve, Leo—but you are free to choose. I am too hardened a sinner for you to be bound to, or smirch yourself with, perhaps. And yet—I love you—love you!”
The cry was so genuine that it frightened her for their safety, and she said “Hush” instinctively. His face when he raised it was lined and scarred as if with his own storm of feeling, and he looked harsher-featured and more rugged than ever. Even after he had regained his usual control and left her, she kept going over the incident with a feeling of bewilderment. It was the only occasion on which she had seen him so upset, and he appeared to her almost wild—almost as if possessed by some unlooked-for remorse. She could but suppose that their mutual relations stung his sense of honour, too, at times, though it was a venial sin, but such a revelation was almost pitiful to her, and, strange to say, strengthened her own resolution to sacrifice the rest of the world to him, as no appeal of his could have done. Even the momentary danger she had been in of a sexual advance in their relations with each other did not alarm her as it had at the time. She realised that the danger had been there, for Gregory’s force of will had at times almost a hypnotic influence upon her, and where she would once have been confident in her own power of denial, she had learned to doubt herself; but she realised also that it was no mere access of passion and self-indulgence that had made him desire a more complete possession of her. For some reason he was afraid of a possible break in the tie that bound them, and wished to strengthen it by every means in his power. He judged that, once master of her body, her morality would be uneasy until he had an established right to such privilege, and by foregoing that claim he had weakened his own position with her. But why should he doubt her resolution now, and why be so suddenly anxious to secure her even to the extent of compromising her honour?
The question troubled her waking thoughts, and followed her even into her dreams. But she found no answer to her own vague disquietude, and the darker knowledge in Gregory’s mind was hidden from her.
“Set ye Uriah in the forefront of the hottest battle ... that he may be smitten, and die.