"George, I'll do anything in the world for you if you'll give her up. Anything. You couldn't be so wicked. George, be quick. Before she wakes. Shan't we carry her out now? Shan't we?" She forgot his manhood, and saw him only as a big animal that might spring and must be soothed. "Let us do that before she knows. George—"
He looked half stupefied as he said childishly, "But I swore I'd have her, and I want her."
"But you don't love her. No, no, you don't." She laid a hand on his knee. "Why, you've known us all our lives."
"Ah!" He sprang up and past her and the spell of the soft hands and voice was broken. He sneered at her. "You thought you'd done it that time!"
"Yes," she said sadly, and put herself between him and Miriam. With her chin on her clasped hands, and her steady eyes, she seemed to be the thing he had always wanted, for the lack of which he had suffered, been tormented.
"George," she said, "I'll give you everything I have—"
He caught his breath. "Yourself?" he asked on an inspiration that held him astonished, eager and translated.
She looked up as if she had been blinded, then stiffly she moved her head. "What do you mean?"
"Give me yourself. Oh, I've been mad tonight—for days—she made me." He pointed to the limp and gracious figure on the floor and leaned against the bed-rail. "Mad! And you, all the time, out there on the moor against the sky. Helen, promise!"
Her voice had no expression when she said, "I promised anything you asked for. Bring some water."