"Tell me, dear, what possessed you to go out into the storm?"
"I don't know," she murmured—"I don't know. I—I felt that I must. I didn't think it was going to break so soon, and then the first flash of lightning and the voice of the thunder! It was like judgment day."
"It is all passed and over," I remarked, with a man's clumsy attempt at consolation.
"I wish it were—I wish it were," she repeated, with an indrawn sigh.
"It is all over hours ago," I said.
She broke away from me passionately. "Oh! Jim, you don't know," she cried.
"I don't know what?" I inquired, as I attempted to draw her to me again.
She pushed my hands away with a gesture of despair. Then with an effort she rose to her feet, and looking at me straight in the face, she said—
"Jim, this must not go on. It is more than I can bear."
I rose to my feet too, my heart beating wildly. "I don't understand you," I answered, though I comprehended her meaning only too well. "What must not go on?"