After a little interval, which seemed endless to him, she turned her face towards him again, laid her hand heavily upon her breast, and spoke:
"You have been cruel to me, Sir Laurence, in all that you have said; but men, I believe, are always cruel to women if they love them, or have loved them. I acquit you of intentional cruelty, and I accept all you say of the necessity for the truth being spoken between us in the new phase of our relation which you have brought about to-day."
The intensity of her face deepened, and the pressure of her hand grew heavier. He muttered a few words of protest, but she went on as if she had not heard him.
"You have spoken words to me, Sir Laurence, which I should not have heard; but they have been spoken, and the wrong cannot be undone. It may be atoned for, and it must. Neither these words nor any other must be spoken between us henceforth--"
He started up.
"You cannot mean this," he said; "it is impossible; I do not believe it.--I will not bear it."
"Be still and hear me," she replied; "I kept silence at your desire,--you will not, I am sure, do less at mine. I too must speak to you, uninterrupted, in the spirit of that truth of which you have spoken so eloquently and with such sophistry--yes, with such sophistry."
Once more she paused and sighed.
"Speak to me, then," he said; and there was true, real anguish in his tone. "Say what you will, but do not be too hard on me. I am only a mortal man; if I have offended you, it is because you are an angel."
"You have not offended me," she said very slowly: "perhaps I ought to be offended, but I am not. I think you judge me aright when you say that truth holds the foremost place in and for me: therefore I tell you truth. You have grieved me; you have added a heavy burden to a load which is not very easy to bear, though the world, which you exhort me to despise and to deny, cannot lay a feather's weight upon it. Your friendship was very dear to me,--very precious; I did not know how dear, I think, until to-day."