The attitude her coming demanded of him was cruelly difficult to maintain, and he sought help from action.
"We 'll let bygones be bygones, then," he answered brusquely; but his brusqueness pleased her. "Take this chair by the fire."
"The question is one of duty," she began again.
He flung himself into another chair on the opposite side of the fireplace, locked his fingers about one knee, and regarded her judicially, as if his whole mind were concentrated upon the problem she was stating. In reality, he was absorbed by the extraordinary nature of the situation, and lost in admiration of the picture she presented. Were she posing for a portrait to be painted, she could not have chosen her position more effectively. The firelight brought out a golden tone from her brown skirt. It was lost in the softness of her velvet waist and hair, to reappear mysteriously in her eyes. She had thrown her crimson cloak over the back of the chair, and it formed a rippling band of colour on each side of her figure. Surely, here was a Portrait of a Lady that would have made an artist famous, could he have done it to the life.
She spoke of her struggle with Emmet as it she were stating an hypothetical case for his dispassionate consideration. Her apparent coolness filled him with amazement, but he recognised that she had adopted the only attitude that could justify the interview and preserve her own dignity. His emotions were held in suspension; he even felt he had none, so compelling was the effect of her serious and impersonal frankness. Yet he saw she was not really frank with him. She omitted entirely to mention certain elements in the situation which she must have known that he knew from her husband's confession to him.
His eyes, fixed upon her own, were filled with speculation, and he was unconscious of the inquisitorial effect they produced upon her. He was thinking how very different she was from what he had at first supposed, and how this gradual opening of his eyes to hitherto unsuspected vistas of her character had not changed for one moment the fact of his love for her. She might vacillate and doubt,—she seemed to do so now,—but questionings, retreats, advances, refusals, were for women.
Finally, she spoke of the possibility of going back to Emmet, and he felt that he could not bear it. It was this very thing which he had decided to protest against, and now his opportunity had come. Every word tortured him, filled him with fury against her for the folly of such a sacrifice, with fury also against the fate that forbade him to plead his own cause and to open her eyes to her husband's motives. He arose from his chair and began to pace the room feverishly, tempted each moment to pause, to throw himself at her feet, and to beg her to love him alone. Would he only lose her thus, and gain her contempt as well?
Felicity ceased speaking, looked into the fire with a musing and thoughtful gaze, smoothing absently the fingers of her gloves, and waited for the opinion she had asked him to give. She was more than satisfied now, even a little afraid of the possible expression of the love she had wished to prove. She had tempted him once before, and he had yielded; now she was making another impossible demand upon his self-restraint, calmly asking him to ignore the truth of their own relationship while she discussed her false duty to another. Suddenly he stood before her, and she looked up to encounter his eyes, which seemed to burn with a blue flame in the intensity of his emotion.
"You can't be so foolish as to go back to him!" he cried. "I tell you, Felicity, it's worse than folly—it's wickedness. I love you, and he doesn't—I won't let him have you!"
"Oh, don't!" she protested, rising hurriedly in her turn. "I ought not to have come—how dark it has grown!—I must be going. What shall I do? He refuses to give me up, and—and I am afraid of him!"