She smiled a ravished smile of pain; her hand fell upon his heavily; her restless head swung from side to side.
"Well, I am very sorry," said Osborne, forced to gentleness in spite of the anger that had consumed him earlier. "It is impossible not to believe you sincere. But, you will admit, all this is very singular and unexpected. I am afraid now that I shall have to send you on a trip to—Switzerland; or else go myself. Better you—it is chilling there, on the glaciers."
Yet the attempt at humor died when he looked at her face with its languishing, sick eyes, its expression of swooning luxury. She sighed deeply.
"No, you cannot escape me now, I think, or I you," she murmured. "There are powers too profound to be run from when once at work, like the suction of whirlpools. If you don't love me, my love is a force enough for two, for a thousand. It will draw and compel you. Yes, I think so. It will either warm you, or burn you to ashes—and myself, too. Oh, I swear to Heaven! It will, it shall! You shouldn't have pressed my hand that night."
"Pressed your hand! on which night?" asked Osborne, who had now turned quite pale, and wanted to run quickly out of the house but could not.
"What, have you forgotten?" she asked with tender reproach, gazing into his eyes; "the night I was going to see my brother nine months ago, and you went with me to Euston, and in saying good-by you——"
She suddenly covered her eyes with her fingers in a rapture at the memory.
Osborne stared blankly at her. He recalled the farewell at Euston, which was accidental, but he certainly had no memory of having pressed her hand.
"I loved you before," her lips just whispered in a pitiful assumption of confidence, "but timidly, not admitting it to myself. With that pressure of your hand, I was done with maidenhood, my soul rushed to you. After that, you were mine, and I was yours."
The words almost fainted on her bitten under lip, and in Osborne, too, a rush of soul, or of blood, took place, a little flush of his forehead. It was a bewitching woman who lay there before him, with that fair freckle-splashed face couched in its cloud of red hair.