Her figure was shaken by the shuddering sobs. His touch tightened to a clasp; he drew the hands down from the distorted face, drew the shaken figure closer, till his own met it—till her bosom was heaving against his heart.
"Do you love me, Mamie?"
"Yes!" she gasped. And then for an instant only their eyes spoke, and in the intensity of their eyes each gave to the other body and soul.
"Yes, I love you," she panted; "it's my punishment, I suppose, to love you too late. I shall never see you after to-morrow, till I am dying—if then—but I love you. Remember it! It's no good to you, you won't care, but remember it, because it's my punishment. You can say, 'When it was too late, she knew! She died detesting herself, shrinking at her own body, her own loathsome body that she gave to another man!' Oh!"—she beat her hands hysterically against his chest—"I hate him, I hate him! God forgive me, he's in his grave, but I hate him when I think what's been. And it wasn't his fault; it was mine, mine—my own degraded, beastly self. Curse me, throw me from you! I'm not fit to be standing here; I'm lower than the lowest woman in the streets!"
The violence of her emotion maddened him. He knew that he loved her; the truth was stripped of the disguise in which he had sought for years to wrap it—he knew that he had never ceased to love her; and a temptation to make her his wife again, to cherish and possess her so long as life should linger in her veins, flooded his reason. Their gaze grew wider, deeper still; he could feel her quivering from head to foot. Another moment, and he would have offered his honour to her keeping afresh. Some men left the smoking-room; there was the sharp interruption of laughter—the slam of the door. They both regained some semblance of self-possession as they moved apart.
"I must go down," she said. And he did not beg her to remain.
It was their real farewell, for on the morrow they could merely exchange a few words amid the bustle of arrival. Liverpool was reached early in the morning, and when he saw her, she wore a hat and veil and was already prepared to go ashore. In the glare of the sunshine the veil could not conceal that her eyes were red with weeping, however, and he divined that she had passed a sleepless night. To Mrs. Baines he privately repeated his injunctions with regard to the physician, for he was determined to have his way; and the widow assured him that she would write to Morson Drummond for an appointment without loss of time. The delays and shouts came to an end while he was speaking to her; and the gangway was lowered, and Mamie moved forward to her side. He saw them again in the custom-house, but for a minute only, and from a distance. Evidently they got through without trouble, for when he looked across again, they had gone.
As he saw that they had gone, a sensation of blankness fell upon Heriot's mood, where he stood waiting among the scattered luggage. His life felt newly empty and the day all at once seemed cold and dark.