"Where do you come from?" he asked at length, recovering himself with difficulty, "so suddenly, so unexpectedly, and how did you get up to the house? The works are in open revolt, you cannot possibly have passed by them."
Eugénie drew nearer slowly.
"I only arrived a few minutes ago. I had indeed to force my way through. Do not ask me how, at present, enough that I forced it. I wanted to be with you before danger reached you."
Arthur tried to turn from her.
"What does this mean, Eugénie? Why do you speak in that tone? Conrad has been making you anxious, though I entreated him not, though I expressly forbade him to do so. I want no sacrifice made from generosity or from a sense of duty. You know it."
"Yes, I know it," she returned steadily. "You sent me from you once before with those words. You could not forgive me that I had once done you a wrong, and in revenging yourself for it, you nearly sacrificed both yourself and me. Arthur, who was the hardest, the unkindest, of us two?"
"It was not revenge," he said in a low voice. "I set you free, you wished it yourself."
Eugénie was standing quite close to him now. The word, which once no consideration on earth would ever have forced from her lips, was so easy to speak now that she knew herself to be beloved. She raised full upon him her dark eyes, all dewy with tears.
"And if I tell my husband that I will have no freedom away from him, that I have come back to share with him whatever may befall us both, that I--that I have learnt to love him, will he once more tell me to go?"
She received no answer, at least not in words, but already she was in his arms, and they held her in an embrace so close and warm, it seemed as though they would never again give up the prize they had won at last.