There was so much surety, so much yearning in her voice that he dropped her hands. But he could not cease pleading.
“You don’t know what you’re doing. It’s infatuation. It’s so wrong—so unreasonable.”
“I’ve been trying to be reasonable,” she answered, with a little gesture that brushed reason aside as irrelevant. “I’ve been trying to be reasonable and intellectual. Those things don’t matter. I love Jim. That, I’m afraid, is all that does matter.”
“But later,” he cried, tortured, “later you’ll find you’ve done the wrong thing.”
“There’s no right or wrong thing. It’s the only thing.”
The tremendous chastity of love was speaking through her and momentarily it sobered Anthony. Reason, emotion might protest in him but before the fact that she was avowing, that she was given to another man, he was helpless. He turned away, the fine carriage of his shoulders changed into the droop of a disappointed boy. And Horatia’s heart was full of pity and misery at the inexorableness of his love for her and the impossibility of loving him.
“I’m so sorry—so sorry,” she cried.
“It’s all right.” There was a touch of resentment in his tone. “Well, there’s nothing more to be said—and no use prolonging this. I’ll take you back.”
But at the edge of the wood the memory of that first embrace went to his head and he must embrace her pleadingly, demandingly again. She was submissive. It was her fault that he felt so. She had made herself clear but she even ventured in her pity to stroke the hair back from his miserable, saddened face.
“I love you, I’ll always love you,” he groaned. “It’s so damned cruel—so unnecessary. Tonight in my arms you loved me. Until you got brooding over memories. I can erase your memories if you give me a chance. I’ll give you everything in the world—all the beauty and power of it. Horatia—we’re young—we belong together.”