Noel could not understand her. The look in her face completely baffled him.
“Christine,” he said, “there is but one thing to do. On one thing alone the whole matter rests. Look at me.”
His voice was resolute, though it was so gentle, and in obedience to its bidding Christine raised her eyes to his.
“Answer me this, Christine. Do you love me?”
And looking straight into his eyes she answered:
“No.”
Noel rose from his seat and crossed over to the fire, where he stood with his back toward her. He did not see the passionate gesture with which she strained her clasped hands to her breast a moment and then stretched them out toward him. In a second she withdrew them and let them fall in her lap. Her heart reproached her for the falseness of her tongue, and this had been a passionate impulse of atonement to him for the wrong that she had done. But stronger than her heart was the other voice that told her to make her utmost effort to keep up the deceit, for in the moment that the knowledge came to her that her heart, for the first time, was possessed by a true and mighty love an instinct stronger than that love itself compelled her to deny it—to give any answer, go any length, do anything sooner than make an admission by which she might be betrayed into doing a great and ineradicable wrong to the man she loved. Yes, the man she loved! For one second’s space she let the inward flame leap up, and then she forced it back and smothered it down, with all the power that was in her.
When Noel turned, his face was calm and he spoke, too, in a controlled and quiet voice.
“We will not be the less friends for this, Christine,” he said; “the best that is left to me is to be near you when I can. You will not forbid me this?”
He saw that her eyes consented. To save her life she could not deny him this—or deny herself. Which was it that she thought of first?