She looked at the bowed head that could be poised so arrogantly, and suddenly her eyes were full of tears. She made a movement to withdraw her hands.
"Oh, Charlie," she said, in a broken, passionate whisper, "if I were only free!"
He raised his head on the instant. "But you can be free. I am offering you freedom. A little courage, a little confidence! Can't you face it with me? Are you afraid?"
His voice was eager, his eyes were shining and boyishly persuasive. His hands still clasped hers with a pressure so vital and insistent that she felt impelled to suffer it.
She shook her head. "No, Charlie. It isn't that. But--but--my promise!"
"Oh, what of that?" he said impetuously. "A promise made under compulsion is no bond at all. You can't keep it and yet be true to yourself. The mistake lay in making it. But to stick to it would be worse than madness. Listen; Maud! You must listen! Your marriage is an abomination, and you must rid yourself of it, whatever the cost. I can see--I have seen all along--that it is an absolute violation of your whole nature. You shrink from the man. I believe in your soul you abhor him. You did it on impulse. He knows that. And you have repented ever since. Your heart was never in it. I think I know where your heart is,"--his voice suddenly softened, and his hand began subtly to draw her back to him. "But we won't discuss that now. It isn't the time. I am concerned only to deliver you. And I am offering you such deliverance as you can accept, a deliverance that you can safely contemplate without shrinking. The publicity of the thing need never touch you personally. You can live in seclusion till it is all forgotten. Maud, my Maud, won't you--can't you--trust an old friend?" His hands were drawing her closer. His dark face, aglow with the ardour of his quest, was close to hers. "You want to be free," he urged. "And--my darling,--I want you free, I want you free!"
His voice throbbed into silence. He was drawing her--drawing her. In another moment he would have had her in his arms, but she held back from him with quivering, desperate strength. "No, Charlie! No!" she said gaspingly.
He released her hands at once, and abruptly. With a species of royal indifference curiously characteristic of him, he veiled his ardour. "It is for you to choose," he said. "I don't take. I offer." Then, as she covered her face, he softened again, took her suddenly, very lightly, by the shoulders. "Have I gone too far, queen of the roses?" he whispered. "Yet he will go further still. It is that that I want to save you from. You must forgive me, sweet, if I seem too anxious. I am hard pressed myself. I want you badly enough, it's true. But that isn't my main reason for urging this. If you had married a man you cared for, I could have borne it. But this,--this is intolerable. There! I have done. Only remember, that I am ready--I am always ready. I shall wait for you by day and by night. Sooner or later--sooner or later, I know you will come. Don't be afraid to come, Queen Maud! I will be to you whatever you wish always. I only ask to serve you."
Rapidly he uttered the low words, still holding her with a touch that was scarcely perceptible, but of which she was so vividly conscious that she quivered from head to foot, every nerve stretched and vibrant, burningly alive, chafing to respond.
The wild impulse to yield herself to his arms, casting away all shackles, was for the moment almost overpowering. Her spirit leapt to the call of his, beating fiercely for freedom like a caged bird viewing its mate in the open sky. How she restrained it she knew not. Perhaps it was fear, perhaps it was that old, instinctive sense of fitness that had influenced her long ago. But the moment passed, and she remained motionless.