A dreadful shiver went through her at the bald brief words. She felt, as Tommy had felt a little earlier, physically sick. The beating of her heart was getting slower and slower. She wondered if presently it would stop.
"Do you believe me?" he said, still holding her eyes with his, still clasping her icy hands firmly between his own.
She forced herself to speak before that horrible sense of nausea overcame her. "Perhaps—David—said the same thing—about Uriah the Hittite."
His face changed a little, but it was a change she could not have defined. His eyes remained inscrutably fixed upon hers. They seemed to enchain her quivering soul.
"No," he said quietly. "Nor did I employ any one else to do it."
"But you were there!" The words seemed suddenly to burst from her without her own volition.
He drew back sharply, as if he had been struck. But he kept his eyes upon hers. "I can't explain anything," he said. "I am not here to explain. I only came to see if your love was great enough to make you believe in me—in spite of all there seems to be against me. Is it, Stella? Is it?"
His words seemed to go through her, tearing a way to her heart; the agony was more than she could bear. She uttered an anguished cry, and wrenched herself from him. "It isn't a question of love!" she said. "You know it isn't a question of love! I never wanted to love you. I never wholly trusted you. But you forced my love—though you couldn't compel my trust. And now that I know—now that I know—" her voice broke as if the torture were too great for her; she flung out her hands with a gesture of driving him from her—"oh, it is hell on earth—hell on earth!"
He drew back for a second before her, his face deathly white. And then suddenly an awful light leapt in his eyes. He gripped her outflung hands. The fire had kindled to a flame and the torture was too much for him also.
"Then you shall love me—even in hell!" he said, through his clenched teeth, and locked her in the iron circle of his arms.