He shook his head.
"To be sad is not necessarily to be unhappy," he answered. "That sounds like a paradox, but it isn't! You remember the 'gentle melancholy' which Milton loved. There is something sweet in that, is there not?"
"But it is not like that with you," she said quickly.
He threw his arms up into the air with a sudden wild gesture of absolute despair. She had touched a chord in his nature too roughly, and it had not stood the strain. For a moment he had thrown off his mask. His white face was ghastly, and his eyes were burning with a hopeless passion.
"My God! No!" he cried. "I am in the depths of hell, with never a gleam of hope to lead me on. And the sin—the sin——"
He stopped suddenly, and his hands fell to his side. Slowly he turned round and looked at her, half doubtfully, half fearfully. What had he said? What had she heard? What did that look in her face mean—that look of anguish, of fear, of horror? Why did she not speak, even though it were to accuse him? Anything rather than that awful silence.
Twice she moved her white lips, but no sound came. The power of articulation seemed gone. Then she caught him by the arm, and turned him slowly round so that he faced his cottage. Only a few yards below them was the spot where she and her sister-in-law that was to have been had lolled in their low chairs by the luncheon-table, and had begun to feel impatient for the coming of one who had never come. Further away still, across the moor, was that dark circular patch of plantation behind which Sir Geoffrey Kynaston had been found, and away upon the cliffs overlooking the scene of the murder was Falcon's Nest.
The grasp on his arm tightened. Then she stretched out her other hand, and with shaking fingers pointed downwards—pointed to the very spot where the deed had been done. The memory of it all came back to her, and hardened her set white face. She looked him straight in the eyes without a quiver, and clenched her teeth.
"Did you—do that?" she asked in a firm, hard tone.
A curious mind slumber seemed to have crept over him. His eyes followed her outstretched hand, and his lips idly repeated her words.