Then, as she said the words, the remembrance of herself being kept warm in Christopher’s arms, and of him softly kissing her eyes, came back to her. Yes; she had liked that. Yes; she knew she had liked that, and been happy.
A deep red flooded her face even as she said the words, and she lowered her eyes.
Stephen saw; and any faint hope he had had that her story might be true went out. His soul seemed to drop into a pit of blackness. She was guilty. She had done something unthinkable. Virginia’s mother. It was horror to be in the same room with her.
‘This thing,’ he said in a low voice, his eyes wide open and blazing, as though he indeed beheld horror, ‘must be made good somehow. There is only one way. It is a shame, a shame to have to utter it in connection with a boy of his age and a woman of yours, but the only thing left for you to do is to marry him.’
‘Marry him?’
She stared at him, her mouth open in her amazement.
‘Nothing else will save you, either from man’s condemnation or God’s punishment.’
‘Stephen,’ she said, ‘are you mad?’—that he should be urging her to marry Christopher!—‘Why should I do anything of the sort?’
‘Why? You ask me why? Am I to suffer the uttermost shame, and be forced to put into words what you have done?’
‘You are certainly mad, Stephen,’ said Catherine, trying to keep her head up, but terribly handicapped, she being of so blameless a life that the least speck on it was conspicuous and looked to her enormous, by the memory of those dimly felt kisses.