They had come to a point where the road ascended and ran along the margin of a great stone quarry, from which the material that went into the building of St. George's Hall had been hewn. The air had grown momently colder, condensing the mist, which now floated away in milky wreaths, disclosing the full moon shining down upon the wide sweep of the valley toward the west. Stung to madness by her words, he stopped and turned upon her, but his answer died on his lips, for he looked into a face of such surpassing beauty that he seemed never to have seen it truly before. The gathered crimson hood invested it with something of the sorcery that Leigh had felt, that any man must have felt. The divinity that had hitherto hedged about the bishop's daughter vanished for the first time like a vanishing mist, and left her only an irresistible woman standing alone with him in the moonlight.
The impulse that swept over him was one of sheer desire. Lena had taught him what a woman's kisses could be, kisses such as Felicity had never given him, such as he would now have from her as his right. Before she could anticipate his intention, he had seized her roughly and strained her to his breast with a violence that hurt.
"Felicity!" he cried in savage delight, "I could make you come to me now. You are my wife—I tell you, my wife!"
She managed to free herself from his grasp, and having retreated a few steps, she faced him, white with anger. Leigh's embrace had been passionate, and had fired her blood with an answering emotion, but Emmet's was an assault, arousing within her an implacable resentment.
"I am not your wife!" she cried, quivering. "Marriage or no marriage, I am not your wife, and never will be. After what has passed between you and that girl, how dared you kiss me—how dared you? When you came down to me—the other morning—from her room—and found me in the hall—did n't I see in your face—in your tears—the state of your mind?"
In her heart she believed it probable that he had wronged Lena to the greatest extent that a man can wrong a woman. He did not divine the extent of her suspicions, however, and unfortunately his next words deepened them to practical certainty.
"God help me," he groaned. "You 've told the truth. You 're not my wife and never have been, but you 've kept her from being, poor girl. You 've made me wrong her—perhaps kill her, for all I know."
Something of the wild and tragic strain that lies so deep in the Celtic race now rose to the surface and transformed him. He took a step forward and seized her by the wrist.
"I could end it all at once by dragging you with me over the cliff, and I don't know but I will!"
Powerless in his grasp, she stood on the very edge of the rock that fell away sheer before them to the depth of two hundred feet. He looked down into the basin, showing here and there in the hollows a pool mirrored in the moonlight, and shapeless masses of machinery and stone. Whether he had really been in earnest, or had only imagined himself to be, the vision of that cruel abyss made him pause, shuddering. But Felicity had not taken her eyes from his face. Now he turned to meet them, not distended with fear, but fixed upon him in discerning scorn. She even made no effort to free her wrist, but stood poised on the brink with an apparent unconcern, that reëstablished her ascendancy as if by magic.