"I daresay I can if you will explain. I wish you hadn't come here to-day. I have enough to bear without that."
"And have I nothing to bear?" she demanded, a flash of passion ruffling her enforced calm. "Do you think that anything but the direst need brought me here?"
"I don't know what brought you here. I am waiting for an explanation."
"What is the use of explaining what you already know?"
"I know nothing," he repeated doggedly. "Explain."
"Well," said Lady Agnes with some bitterness, "it seems to me that an explanation is really necessary, as apparently I am talking to a child instead of a man. Sit down and listen."
This time Lambert obeyed, and laughed as he did so. "Your taunts don't hurt me in the least," he observed. "I love you too much."
"And I love in return. No! Don't rise again. I did not come here to revive the embers of our dead passion."
"Embers!" cried Lambert with bitter scorn. "Embers, indeed! And a dead passion; how well you put it. So far as I am concerned, Agnes, the passion is not dead and never will be."
"I am aware of that, and so I have come to appeal to that passion. Love means sacrifice. I want you to understand that."