"If you and I were alone in the world!"
"If you are thinking of your friends," he pleaded, "they are more likely to be proud of the woman who had the courage to break away from a debasing union. Every one realises—what your husband is. He has been unfaithful not only to you but to every friend he has ever had."
"Do I not know it!" she moaned. "Isn't the pain of it there in my heart, hour by hour!"
His reasonableness was deserting him. Again he was the lover, begging for his rights.
"Wipe him out of your mind, sweetheart," he begged. "I'll buy you from him, if you like, or fight him for you, or steal you—I don't care which. Anything sooner than let you go."
"I don't want to go," she confessed, afraid of her own words, shivering with the meaning of them.
"You never shall," he continued, his voice gaining strength with his rising hopes. "You've opened my lips and you must hear what is in my heart. You are the one love of my life. My hours and days are empty, I want you always by my side."
The love of him swept her away. Her head had fallen back, she saw his face through the mist.
"Go on, go on," she begged.
"I want you as I have wanted nothing else in life—not only for my own sake, for yours. I want to chase all those lines of sorrow away from your face."