Then, in her next speech, he saw two things quite clearly—that she was determined, come what might, to have her way about to-night at any rate, and to go to any lengths to obtain it. She might not have been determined when she came into the room, but she was determined now.
She leant forward in her chair towards him, her cheeks were a little redder, her breath was coming a little faster.
“Jim, I know you meant it seriously. I know you mean it seriously now. But there isn’t much time; and after all, there isn’t much to say. We’ve arranged it all before. We were to have this night, weren’t we, and then, afterwards, we’d arrange to go abroad or something. Here we are, two modern people, you and I, looking at the thing squarely. All our lives we’ve lived stupidly, dully, comfortably. There’s never been anything in the very least to disturb us. And now suddenly this romance has come. Are we, just because of stupid laws that stupid people made hundreds of years ago, to miss the chance of our lives? Jim!”
She put one hand across towards him and touched his knee.
But he, looking her steadily in the face, spoke without moving.
“Wait,” he said. “Stop. I want to ask you a question. Do you love me—really, I mean? So that you would go with me to-morrow to Timbuctoo, anywhere?”
For an instant she lowered her eyes, then she said vehemently, eagerly, “Of course, of course I do. You know—Jim, how can you ask? Haven’t I shown it by coming here?”
But that was exactly what she hadn’t done. Her coming there showed the opposite, if anything; and indeed, at once, in a way that she had answered him, he had seen the truth. She might think, at that moment, quite honestly that she loved him, but really what she wanted was not the man at all, but the expression, the emotion, call it what you will.
And he saw, too, exactly what the after-results would be. They would both of them in the morning postpone immediate action. They would wait a few weeks. She would return to her husband; for a little, perhaps, they would write. And then gradually they would forget. She would begin to look on it as an incident, a “romantic hour”; she would probably sigh with relief at the thought of all the ennui and boredom that she had avoided by not running away with him. He, too, would begin to regard it lightly, would put it down to that queer place, to anything and everything, even perhaps to Morelli; and then—well, it’s no use in crying over spilt milk, and there’s no harm done after all—and so on, until at last it would be forgotten altogether. And so “the unforgiveable sin” would have been committed, “the unforgiveable sin,” not because they had broken social laws and conventions, but because they had acted without love—the unforgiveable sin of lust of the flesh for the sake of the flesh alone.
After her answer to his question she paused for a moment, and he said nothing; then she went on again: “Of course, you know I care, with all my heart and soul.” She said the last three words with a little gasp, and both her hands pressed tightly together. She had moved her chair closer to his, and now both her hands were on his knee and her face was raised to his.