"Trust your heart, my darling," he said; "only trust that!"
"I do trust it. And I trust yours. You know you are battling with not me alone, but yourself. There is something within you that tells you I am right."
"My cowardice. Nothing more. My fear of unpleasant things for which my real self does not care two straws."
She shook her head at him; then advanced and laid her long hands on his shoulders.
"It is just your real self that does care," she said. "Oh, my dear, I do not mean it is your false self that loves me. But it is your false self that has been urging me to-night. Edward"—and again her lips so trembled that she could scarcely speak—"Edward, I don't want to spare you one moment of the wretchedness that has come upon us, nor would I spare myself. If we were not suffering so, we should not love so. All our suffering is part of our love. I don't know why it has happened like this, why God didn't allow us to meet sooner. And that doesn't concern us. It is so. What does concern us is not to graft our love on to disloyalty and unfaithfulness. It is in our power to do right. I can't deliberately choose to find happiness for you or for me in a crime."
"Crime!"
"Yes, the worst sort of crime, for it is one that is a crime that we should commit against each other. I don't think"—and a shadow of a smile hung round Elizabeth's mouth—"I don't think I should feel so very bad if I murdered some one whom I hate. But in this I should be murdering all that is best in the man I love."
"You are talking wildly!" he said. "Murder! What nonsense!"
"I never spoke more deliberately," said she.
Again he was stung to a frenzy of impotence.