She kept her face averted. "I mean—that some forms of torture are worse than death. If it comes to that—if you compel me—I shall choose death."
"Stella!" He let her go so suddenly that she nearly fell. The utterance of her name was as a cry wrung from him by sheer agony. He turned from her with his hands over his face. "My God!" he said, and again almost inarticulately, "My—God!"
The low utterance pierced her, yet she stood motionless, her hands gripped hard together. He had forced the words from her, and they were past recall. Nor would she have recalled them, had she been able, for it seemed to her that her love had become an evil thing, and her whole being shrank from it in a species of horrified abhorrence, even though she could not cast it out.
He had turned towards the window, and she watched him, her heart beating in slow, hard strokes with a sound like a distant drum. Would he go? Would he remain? She almost prayed aloud that he would go.
But he did not. Very suddenly he turned and strode back to her. There was purpose in every line of him, but there was no longer any violence.
He halted before her. "Stella," he said, and his voice was perfectly steady and controlled, "do you think you are being altogether fair to me?"
She wrung her clasped hands. She could not answer him.
He took them into his own very quietly. "Just look me in the face for a minute!" he said.
She yearned to disobey, but she could not. Dumbly she raised her eyes to his.
He waited a moment, very still and composed. Then he spoke. "Stella, I swear to you—and I call God to witness—that I did not kill Ralph Dacre."