“Some legal difficulty!” she repeated. “What is the use of that now? I can't leave you again. I'll die first. I can't bear it. O, Robert, I am so tired of the law. There are no laws for the birds, or for the flowers, or for the trees, or for any thing that is happy! Why should we be made so miserable—just to please the magistrates and mayors!”
“But it is more than that—I am certain. Suppose it has something to do with Parflete?”
“With Wrexham? How could that be? He is dead.”
“He may not be dead.”
She sank down to the floor on her knees.
“O my God! You know that he is living.”
“Reckage doesn't say so. But would he and Pensée come unless they felt we should need them?”
“I need no one except you. I don't want to see them. I don't want to hear their news. They are killing you. You seem calm, but your face! you have never looked like this before. O, darling, it can't be what you think it is.”
He lifted her from the ground and took her in his arms again, as though he could defy the cruel, invisible fate which had decreed their separation.
“In any case,” he said, “I won't give you back—I cannot. It is too much to ask. You are mine—you were never his—never. God is not unjust, and this is unjust. As for other people and outside opinion, they have not mattered to me at any time, and least of all can they matter now. I won't give you back.”