If only she had trudged all night in the mud, trudged on, however much exhausted she had been, she could have faced Stephen with the proper indignation of virtue unjustly suspected; but there were those hours asleep, folded warm in Christopher’s arms, and through her sleep the consciousness of his kisses. She would probably have been very ill if she had trudged all night, but she could have held up her head and ordered Stephen out of her presence. As it was, her head wouldn’t hold up, and Stephen was as certain as if he had seen the pair in some hotel that there had been no breakdown, and his mother-in-law was lying.
Hideous, he thought; too hideous. So hideous that one couldn’t even pray about it, for to speak about such matters to God....
‘I have nothing more to say,’ he said slowly, his face as cold and hard as frozen rock, ‘except that unless you marry him you will never be allowed to see my wife again. But the disgrace of such a marriage—the disgrace——’
She stared at him, pale now.
‘But Stephen——’ she began.
She stared at him, across the absurd mutton, the mutton he had felt was so incongruous, gone cold and congealed on its dish. This silliness, this madness, this determination to insist on sin! She might have laughed if she had not been so angry; she might have laughed, too, if it had not been for the awkward, the mortifying memory of those kisses; she might, even so, have laughed, if he had not had the power to cut her off from Virginia. But he had the power,—he, the stranger she had let in to her gates when she could so easily have been ungenerous and shut him out. Why, it wouldn’t even have been ungenerous, but merely prudent. Three years more of freedom she would have gained, of freedom from him and possession of her child, by just saying one word. And she hadn’t said it. She had let him in. And here he was with power to destroy her.
She looked at him, very pale. ‘It’s at least a mercy, then,’ she said, her eyes full of bright tears of indignation at the injustice, the cruelty of the man she had made so happy, ‘that I love Christopher.’
‘You love him!’ repeated Stephen, appalled by the shamelessness of such a confession.
‘Yes,’ said Catherine. ‘I love him very much. He loves me so much, and I find it impossible—I find it impossible——’
Her voice faltered, but with a great effort she got it steady again, and went on, ‘I find it impossible not to love people who are good, if they love me.’