He put his arm round her and embraced her with tears in his eyes.
"Sweetheart," he said, "you are wonderful! See! We are alone here together, perfectly alone, perfectly happy. Let us always be for each other. Dear, I will sacrifice everything for you. You complete me. You were made for me. Come away with me, come with me for ever and ever. My wife will divorce me and we can be married; always to be together."
He had declared himself, and his wicked wish at last. He made an open proffer of his shameful love.
There was not a single thought in his mind of Mary, her deep devotion, her love and trust. He brushed aside the supreme gift that God had allowed him as a man brushes away an insect from his face.
All that the girl had said in answer was that he must not talk in such a way. Of course it could never be. They must be content as they were, hard as it was. "I am very sorry, Gilbert dear, you can never know how sorry I am. But you know I care for you. That must be all."
He had sent her home by herself that night, paying the cabman and giving him the address in Kensington.
Then for an hour before going to bed he had walked up and down his sitting room in a welter of hope, fear, regret, desire, wonder and deep perplexity.
He had now lost all sense of honour, all measure of proportion. His desire filled him and racked his very bones. Sometimes he almost hated Rita; always he longed for her to be his, his very own.
Freed from all possible restraint, lord of himself—"that heritage of woe!"—he was now drinking more deeply, more madly than ever before in his life.
He was abnormal in an abnormal world which his insanity created. The savage torture he inflicted on himself shall be only indicated here. There are deeper hells yet, blacknesses more profound in which we shall see this unhappy soul!