“Why don’t you ask me to—forgive?” she said, her voice very low.
“Because I won’t ask the impossible,” he answered. “Because you tell me you are human, and—well, some things are past forgiveness. I know that.”
He swung round with the words. She heard him open the door, heard again the drip and patter of the rain outside, heard the heavy tread of his feet as he went out.
Then, when she knew that she was alone, her strength went from her. She covered her face and wept.
In that hour she knew that she was chained indeed, beyond all hope of escape. Brute-beast as he described himself—murderer at heart as she believed him to be—yet had he implanted that within her heart which she could never cast out. Whatever he was, whatever he did, could make no difference now. She loved him.
CHAPTER VII
THE MESSAGE
“The doctor says it can’t possibly go on much longer.”
“But if it does—if it does——”
“Oh, Lucy, do stop crying! What’s the good? You’ll make yourself ill, child, if you go on.”
“I can’t help it—I can’t help it. Mother looked like death just now.”