‘There you are.’
She grasped the hand, and shut her eyes to make a long age of the holding on to him. ‘Oh, you dear dear fellow!—don’t think me unwomanly; I must tell you now: I am naked and can’t disguise. I see you are ice—feel: and if you were different, I might be. You won’t be hurt by hearing you’ve made yourself dear to me—without meaning to, I know! It began that day at Lakelands; I fell in love with you the very first minute I set eyes on you! There’s a confession for a woman to make! and a married woman! I’m married, and I no more feel allegiance, as they call it, than if there never had been a ceremony and no Jacob Blathenoy was in existence. And why I should go to him! But you shan’t be troubled. I did not begin to live, as a woman, before I met you. I can speak all this to you because—we women can’t be deceived in that—you are one of the men who can be counted on for a friend.’
‘I hope so,’ Dartrey said, and his mouth hardened as nature’s electricity shot sparks into him from the touch and rocked him.
‘No, not yet: I will soon let it drop,’ said she, and she was just then thrillingly pretty; she caressed the hand, placing it at her throat and moving her chin on it, as women fondle birds. ‘I am positively to go, then?’
‘Positively, you are to go; and it’s my command.’
‘Not in love with any one at all?’
‘Not with a soul.’
‘Not with a woman?’
‘With no woman.’
‘Nor maid?’