He too got up, but he did not follow her. He stood leaning against one of the windows with his back to the outer air.
“I have blamed myself,” she answered gently,—“often.”
“You would,” he said. “You’re made like that. You’d bow your back to any burden you believed it to be your duty to bear. But you needn’t imagine it your especial mission to undertake any burden on my account. I wish from the bottom of my soul you could bring yourself to forget my existence.”
“I can’t do that,” she answered... “I don’t want to.”
She moved from her position and came to a standstill in front of him with her hands locked together in an attitude that was like a supplication in the nervous entwining of her fingers.
“I want you to lead a life more worthy of yourself,” she said... “worthier of the man I knew and loved. Oh, my dear! if you only knew how all these years you have been steadily breaking my heart... I can’t bear it... I can’t bear it, that you should lead the life you are leading... You are going back to that woman to-morrow... I know it. Give her up, Hugh,—and this life of adventure,—for my sake—because I ask it. Don’t go to-morrow. I hate the thought of your going... Stay here.”
“Impossible,” he answered with quiet decision. “I am pledged. I must go. I have no choice in the matter.”
Her hands fell apart. She made a quick, almost a despairing gesture.
“And do I count for nothing in your life?” she asked passionately. “You loved me once... in the years that are past—when you were younger. And I was young too—a girl. Ah! life, life! How full of promise it seems, and how each successive year fades and dims that promise! You were a king among men to me then... And now—you lead the life of a common adventurer, following reckless and dangerous enterprises, and enjoying your idle moments after the manner of a loose liver. Oh! my God! need this thing be? ... Why will you wantonly subjugate all that is fine in your nature? It was those finer qualities in you that I loved, and you are deliberately killing them.”
Lawless had drawn himself instinctively straighter under the shower of words. He looked at her with hard, unresponsive eyes.