"You!" he exclaimed.
She came up to him, her hand at her throat, her face turned towards the sunset. For a moment her breath failed and she could not speak; then all the words that she had meant to say—the appeal to him for truth, the cry of her own belief in him—rang theatrical and ineffectual in her brain.
When at last she spoke, it was to voice the mere tripping of her tongue—to utter words which belied the beating of her thoughts.
"You must marry her," she said, and it seemed to her that it was a stranger who spoke. She did not mean that—she had never meant it.
He looked at her blankly, and made a sudden movement forward, but she waved him off.
"For God's sake, whom?" he demanded.
She wished that he had laughed at her—that he had laid bare the whole hideous farce, but he did not; he regarded her gravely, with a grim inquiry.
"Whom do you mean?" he repeated.
A light wind sprang up, blowing across the pasture and whirling the dead leaves of distant trees into their faces. Overhead other stars came out, and far away an owl hooted.
"Oh! you know, you know," she said, with a desperate anger at his immobility. "When I saw you with her to-day, I did not—I did not—"