“Now you are making fun of me,” she said in a subdued voice which broke suddenly.
“Are you conscious of sin?” Heyst asked gravely. She made no answer. “For I am not,” he added; “before Heaven, I am not!”
“You! You are different. Woman is the tempter. You took me up from pity. I threw myself at you.”
“Oh, you exaggerate, you exaggerate. It was not so bad as that,” he said playfully, keeping his voice steady with an effort.
He considered himself a dead man already, yet forced to pretend that he was alive for her sake, for her defence. He regretted that he had no Heaven to which he could recommend this fair, palpitating handful of ashes and dust—warm, living sentient his own—and exposed helplessly to insult, outrage, degradation, and infinite misery of the body.
She had averted her face from him and was still. He suddenly seized her passive hand.
“You will have it so?” he said. “Yes? Well, let us then hope for mercy together.”
She shook her head without looking at him, like an abashed child.
“Remember,” he went on incorrigible with his delicate raillery, “that hope is a Christian virtue, and surely you can't want all the mercy for yourself.”
Before their eyes the bungalow across the cleared ground stood bathed in a sinister light. An unexpected chill gust of wind made a noise in the tree-tops. She snatched her hand away and stepped out into the open; but before she had advanced more than three yards, she stood still and pointed to the west.