And then the half-seen softness of her face seemed to madden him. "Before God you shall see me as I am. You shall understand."
His arms clasped her close, his reckless, passionate kiss was on her lips, and then----
Then he stood as it were before the tribunal which he had invoked--that tribunal of perfect knowledge, of blinding truth, in which alone lies the terror of judgment.
"Marjory!" The whisper could scarcely be heard. "Marjory! is it true? My God! is it true that you love me?" He still held her, but with a touch which had changed utterly, and his tone was almost pitiful in its appeal. "Marjory! why--why did I not know? Why did you hide yourself from me?"
"I did not know myself," she answered, and her voice had a ring of pain in it; "how could I know? But it would have made no difference--no difference to you."
The keenest reproach could not have hit him so hard as this instinctive defence of her own ignorance, her own innocence; it pierced the armour of his worldliness and went straight to that part of his nature which, even at his worst, held fast to life in a sort of veiled self-contempt.
"You are right; it would have made no difference, no difference to such as I am." Then in the darkness he was at her feet kissing the hem of her garment.
"Adieu, my love; adieu for evermore!"
The next instant the sound of his retreating footsteps broke the stillness, and she was alone.
Alone, with a smile upon her face--a smile of infinite tenderness for his manhood and for her own new-found womanhood, which tingled in each vein and seemed to fill the whole world with the cry, "He loves me! he loves me!"