Mordaunt's hands fell from her, setting her free. "In Heaven's name," he said, "why didn't you go with him?"
She did not understand his tone. It held neither anger nor contempt, and so quiet was it that she could still have fancied it almost indifferent. Yet, inexplicably, it cut her to the heart.
"I'll tell you the truth!" she said, a little wildly. "I—I would have gone with him. I offered—I begged—to go. But he—he sent me back."
"Why?" Again that deadly quietness of utterance, as though, indeed, a dead man spoke.
Her throat began to work spasmodically, though she had no desire to weep.
She felt as if her heart were bleeding from a mortal wound.
With an effort that nearly choked her, she made reply.
"He said—it was—my duty."
"Your duty!" He repeated the word deliberately. Though the devil had gone out of his eyes, she could not meet them any longer. Not that she feared to do so; but the pain at her heart was intolerable, and it was his look, his voice, that made it so.
Almost as if he divined this, he turned quietly from her. He walked to the window and opened it wide, as if he felt suffocated. The wind was moaning desolately through the trees. There was the scent of coming rain in the air.
He spoke with his back to her, without apparent effort. "I release you from your duty," he said. "Go to him! Go to him—now!"