"It's impossible!" he cried suddenly.
"She may find it so."
"I wasn't thinking of her," said he.
He stretched out his arms wide and towards her.
"Elizabeth!" he cried.
She wavered where she stood. Never yet had the balance hung so evenly, as when now he made his final appeal to her, wordless except for her own name, for into that his whole soul went. She felt dragged to him by a force almost irresistible. From him and her alike for the moment all the ties and considerations of loyalty and honour were loosed; he knew only his overmastering need, she, the intensity of a woman's longing to give herself. Had the choice been then for the first time to be made, she would have flung herself to him. But the force of the choice she had made before had already made itself firm within her.
"No, no, no!" she said, and the words were drops of blood. Then once more she had power to turn from him.
She went back to the piano to close it, and mechanically shut up the music she had been playing from. Then, though she had heard nothing, she felt that some change had come into the room. From the edge of the field of vision she saw that Edward had turned towards the door, and she looked. The door was open, and Edith stood there.
Elizabeth let the piano-lid slip from her hands, and it fell with a bang and jar of wires.
"You are back early," she said. "At least it is early, is it not? Has Aunt Julia come back?"