When he took Agnes's hand he looked inquiringly at her. His expression seemed to say:
“Is the time come yet?”
He did not let her hand go. She did not withdraw it. He could not fail to see the little flush that had come to her face.
“What you have suffered!” he said. “What you are suffering still! You did not sleep last night. My poor Agnes! I know now that I did not give you the right advice. You should not have been patient with him. You should not have hoped that he would be brought to you again. If I had given you the advice which my heart prompted me to give I would have said otherwise to you; but I wanted to see you made happy, and I thought that your happiness lay in patience.”
“You were wrong,” she said, with a wan smile. “I was patient, but no happiness came to me.”
“And you still love him?” said he in a low voice.
She snatched her hand away.
“I—love him—him?” she cried. “Oh no, no; he is not the man I loved. The moment he came before me with the look of a savage on his face and the words of a savage thirsting for blood on his lips, I knew that he was not the man I loved. The man whom I had promised to love—the man for whom I was waiting, was quite another one. The Claude Westwood who entered this room had, I perceived, nothing in common with the Claude Westwood who had parted from me in this same room, saying, 'I shall make a name that will be in some measure worthy of your acceptance.' Listen to me while I tell you that that very night, when I went to my room, I took the miniature of the man whom I had loved and trampled upon it. And yet—ah, I tried to force myself to believe that I was sorry. I tried to force myself to believe that I loved the man who had come to me telling me that his name was Claude Westwood. I knew in my heart that I did not love him. Ah, what he said to me was true. He said—a smile was on his face all the time—' Every seven years a man changes utterly: no particle of him remains to-day as it was seven years ago.' And then he went on to demonstrate, quite plausibly, quite convincingly, for indeed he convinced me at once, that it was ridiculous for a woman to hope that, after seven years, the same man whom she had once loved should return to her; it was physically impossible, he explained, and this system he termed, very aptly, 'Nature's Statute of Limitations.'”
“My poor Agnes!”
“Then it was I knew that, so far from being sorry that that man did not love me, I felt glad. I knew that there remained no particle of love for him in my heart when you told me that he loved Clare Tristram, for I felt no pang of jealousy. Poor girl—poor girl!”