But she felt his eyes upon her; she saw his face set in a strange expression, half-vacant, half-surprised. "To set you free?" he murmured.
"To break off our engagement," she launched out. "Oh, I know it is horrible of me," she went on quickly, feeling herself giving way at this moment of trial, despite all her fortitude and all her schooling. She saw that his lips made as if he were about to speak, but, dreading to hear him yet, she gathered up her force and hurried on piteously. "Please don't think that I have anything against you, that you are in the least to blame. You have been chivalrous and kind throughout. The responsibility must all rest on my shoulders."
He winced at the pain she was visibly enduring, the expression of her eyes, the convulsive catch of her breath.
"But what on earth has come between us?" he exclaimed, in a sort of dull despair. He felt no joyous glow at the return of his liberty. The occasion seemed too miserably tragic, and his human association with her had made him care for her enough to be deeply distressed at the agony under which she was labouring. Even now, if it could have made her happy, if it could have induced her to withdraw all she had said, he would have taken her hand tenderly, and melted away every cloud between them. "Yesterday all was well, and to-day——" He gave a gesture of blank bewilderment.
"I have arrived at the conviction that we are not suited for each other, that I am not the sort of woman to make your life all that it should be."
"Oh, come," he said. "I am surprised to find such morbid nonsense running in your head."
She was taken aback at this resistance on his part; and she rightly set it down to pure fraternal consideration for her. She let herself go now; best to give her explanation at full length.
"It is not a sudden impulse I have yielded to, or a passing wave of depression," she urged, trying to conjure up the ghost of a smile again. "Believe me, I have seen the right path before me only after the deepest consideration."
He interrupted her with a gesture.
"But what has come between us?" he insisted again. "You do not say you have ceased to love me."