As they stood there so, he felt a sudden tightening of the pressure of her arms. They strained him close against her. His heart leaped; but he was not sure. There was something that alarmed him even in that clasp of love.
“Are you happy?” he whispered in the lowest murmur. But with a sudden wrench she tore herself away from him, and when he tried to follow, waved him back with a gesture which he could not disregard.
“Happy!” she said in a voice that mocked the thought, as she wrung her hands together, and then, for a moment, hid her face in the curve of one tensely bended arm. “What have I to do with happiness?” she cried out, flinging wide her arms, and looking upward, as if appealing to some invisible presence rather than to him or to herself. “I had it given to me once in boundless measure, and I played with it, and tossed it from me. It was lightly and easily done, and now it cannot be undone.”
Harold stood where her imperious gesture had stopped him, and looked at her in consternation.
“What do you mean?” he said. “You will not try now to deny your love for me! You have owned it in that close embrace which can mean nothing but—”
“Good-by!” she interrupted him. “It means inevitable parting. You must go, or, if not, I must fly to some place where we cannot meet again.”
“But, dearest, we cannot part. I have told you how I love you in plain words. You have told me the same, without the need of words.”
She looked at him,—a deep, inscrutable gaze,—and shook her head.
“I have had perfect love once,” she said, “and from you—the one man whose love could ever have any meaning for me—love that included perfect trust, perfect confidence, perfect respect. I refuse to take from you a smaller thing. It is easier to give you up than to face that thought.”
“But Sonia! Darling! You have got that love! I tell you it is just the same!”