“You had better go,” she said to him in the end. “It’s nearly ten o’clock. If he is coming up at all he will be here soon.”
“Of course he is coming up. How can I leave you like this?” he answered wildly. “Can’t I do anything, say anything, see him for you?” Margaret showed the pale simulacrum of a smile.
“That was my idea, once before, wasn’t it? No, you can’t see him for me.”
“I can’t do anything?”
“I’m not sure.”
She spoke slowly, hesitatingly. In truth she did not know how she was to bear what she saw before her. Not marriage, safety, happiness, was to be hers, only humiliation. Death was preferable, a thousand times preferable. She was impulsive and leaped to this conclusion.
“Can’t I do anything?” he said again.
“Peter, Peter Kennedy, you say you would do anything, anything, for me. I wonder what you mean by it.... How much or how little?”
“Lay down my life.”
“Or risk it? There must be a way, you must know a way of ... of shortening things. I could not go through it all again ... not now. If the worst came to the worst, if I can’t make him listen to reason, if he won’t forgive or understand. If I have to face the court again, my father and stepmother to know of my ... my imprudence, all the horrors to be repeated. To have to stand up and deny ... be cross-examined. About you as well as him....”