“Yes,—I know,—I know you are shocked. And I don't care,—do you understand? I don't care that! You want your answer, Mr. Landover. Well, you shall have it now. I cannot marry you. This is final.”
The blood left his face. “You don't know what you are saying, Ruth,” he exclaimed. “You are angry. When you have had time to—”
“I've had all the time I need,” she interrupted shortly. “I don't want to be disagreeable,—but it's no use, Mr. Landover. I do not love you. I am sorry if I have misled you into hoping. There is nothing more to be said.”
“You have misled me,” he cried out bitterly.
“I am to blame, I suppose, for not giving you your answer before this. I have temporized. It is a woman's trick,—and a horrid one, I'll admit. I have never even thought of marrying you.”
“Are you in love with Percival?” he demanded.
“Yes,—I think I am,” she replied, looking him straight in the eye. She spoke with a sort of gasp, as if releasing a confession that surprised even herself.
“My God, Ruth,—I can't believe it,” he groaned.
“I have denied it to myself—oh, a thousand times,—I've fought against it. I've tried to hate him. I've done everything in my power to make him believe that I despise him. But it's no use,—it's no use. I—I can't think of anything else. I can't think of any one else. Oh, I know I am quite mad to say this, but I sometimes find myself praying that we may never be rescued. It might mean—well, you can see what it might mean. Thank God, you have driven me to this confession. It is the first time I have been really honest with myself. I have lied to myself over and over again about my feeling toward him. I have lain awake for hours at night lying to myself—telling myself that I hate him and always will hate him. Now, it's out,—the truth is out. I have never hated him,—I have cared for him from the very beginning.”
She spoke rapidly, the words rushing forth like a flood suddenly released after breaking through the dam, sweeping everything before it,—resistless, devastating, cruelly rapturous. She thought nothing of the hurt she was inflicting upon the man beside her; he was an atom in the path of the torrent, a thing that went down and was left behind as the flood swept over and by him. As suddenly as it began the torrent was checked. A hot flush seared her neck, her cheeks, her brow.