"You speak of marriage," he said gently, "but just think what kind of a marriage that would be—forced, on one side—I full of resentment against you for the rest of my life——"
Thus did he try to reason with her, tried to show her a better way, offering to vow not to marry anyone for two years, during which he promised to see whether he could not acquire for her those feelings which a husband——
But she cut him short coldly. In two years she would be dead without him. She would kill herself. Life lived in pain was a thing of no value—a human life of no more value than a fly's. If he would marry her, she would tell him where Miss Marsh was: and, after the marriage, if he did not love her, she knew a way of setting him free—though, even in that case, Rosalind Marsh should never have him—she, Hylda, would see to that.
For the first time in his life Osborne knew what it was to hate. He, the man accused of murder, felt like a murderer, but he had grown strangely wise, and realized that this woman would die cheerfully rather than reveal her secret. He left her once more, stood ten minutes at the window—then laughed harshly.
"I agree," he said quite coolly, turning to her.
She, too, was outwardly cool, though heaven and hell fought together in her bosom. She held out to him a Bible. He kissed it.
"When?" she asked.
"This day week," he said.
She wrote on a piece of paper the address of a house in Poland Street; and handed it to him.
"Miss Marsh is there," she said, as though she were his secretary of former days, in the most business-like way.