‘Perhaps not, but affection and gratitude are near akin, and Kenrick is satisfied with affection.’
‘I would not be if I were he,’ cried Cyril, beside himself with anger and jealousy. ‘I would have nothing less than your love, your whole-hearted passionate love. What! be content to dwell beside the narrow sluggish river, and never sicken for the wide wild sea? I would not be your husband on such terms. I despise my cousin that he can marry you, knowing, as he must know, that you do not love him.’
‘You have no right to say that. Do you think yourself so much better than he that no woman, having once loved you, can love him?’
‘I know that no true woman ever loved truly twice. There is no such thing as second love worth having. It is the mere ghost of feeling, like a rose cut at midsummer to be shut up in a box and brought out at Christmas, revived by sulphur fumes—a phantom flower, with no more bloom or freshness than if it were made of paper. Just so much for second love.’
If she could have stirred she would have left him, but she had still an acute sense of her helplessness. She must stay and listen, let him say what he would. What was this conflict of feeling in her breast? Passionate love, passionate anger, scorn that made it sweet to wound him, fondness that made her long to fling herself upon his breast and cry, ‘Oh, give me shelter, give me rest! Let all the world go by. You and I can be all the world to each other.’
The yellow wintry light faded in the west, the sky grew dull and bleak, the headstones had a grayer look.
‘Why do you concern yourself about me?’ she asked bitterly. ‘You have come to assist at my wedding, in order that the conventionalities may not be outraged. That is all very right. My name has been bandied about on people’s lips quite enough already. It is just as well to avoid the scandal of your absence. But that ends all between us. We need never see each other’s faces after to-morrow. Why should we say hard things, or talk about the past? Had you not better go to the Vicarage, and let me go quietly home?’
She was much the calmer of the two, despite that inward struggle between love and resentment. He was mad with the pent-up feeling of all those long dreary days and nights in which he had fought with his passion, believing he had beaten it, only to find it now starting up in his soul, indestructible as the principle of evil.
‘Let you go! No,’ he cried, with his strong grasp upon her wrist. He who had been weak as a child a few short weeks ago, was strong now with all the strength of a desperate tempted soul. ‘No, I have got you, and I will not let you go. Oh, my love, my love, my lost and only love, I will not let you go till I have told you something of the truth.’
His arms were round her now, her head drawn close to his breast, his eyes looking down into hers, with fond despairing love, his words hurrying thick and fast from lips that trembled as they spoke.