"I didn't know—I didn't know—" she found herself murmuring faintly in protest.
"But you know now!" His voice rang out exultantly, and, though she felt that the thing she feared and dreaded was coming upon her, she still stood there without moving a step, without lifting a hand, mesmerized, enchanted, by the force of the man. "You know now," he repeated. "You know now, Gabriella, and you knew all along."
It was true. In spite of her surprise, in spite of her shrinking, in spite of her evasion, she confessed it in her heart. She had known all the time. Something deep down in her, something secret and profound and clairvoyant, had discerned the truth from the beginning.
"No! no!" she cried out sharply, for, mistaking her silence, he had stooped to her with the directness which impelled all his movements, which so easily brushed aside and discarded intervening encumbrances, and had kissed her on the lips.
For an instant, in the merciless tenderness of his arms, her resistance melted from her. Beneath the crash of the storm she did not think, she did not struggle, she did not murmur. Her consciousness seemed suspended, and with her consciousness, her memory, her judgment, even her passionate unshaken loyalty to the love of her youth. Then, after the moment of weakness, of passive submission, it was as if her soul and body caught fire at a flash, and a quiver of anger ran through her, enkindling her glance and nerving her spirit.
"But I do not love you! I never meant that I loved you!" she cried.
At her words his arms dropped to his sides, and he stood as if turned to stone, with only his questioning eyes and the vivid red of his hair seeming alive. There was no need now for her to struggle. At her first movement to escape he had released her and drawn to a distance.
"You don't love me?" he stammered. "Why, I saw it. I've seen it for weeks. I see it now in your face."
"You see nothing—nothing." She denied it bitterly. "I liked you as a friend. I did not think of this. I never suspected it. I don't love you. I don't love you in the least."
He was very still. The jubilant spirit of the spring had ebbed away from his look, and even in the height of her anger she was struck by the change in his face.