“Only—only one must try to be fair all round—to look at things straight.”
She leaned her chin on her palm and her eyes grew thoughtful.
“I don’t know, but it seems to me that we weren’t meant to run away from things—hard things. If a man and a woman marry, they must accept their responsibilities—not evade them.”
So absorbed was she in her trend of thought that she never realised how directly this speech must strike at Blaise himself. His face changed slightly.
“You’re right, of course,” he said abruptly. “You—generally are. And if all women were like you, it would be easy enough.”
His eyes dwelt with a curious intentness on the pure outline of her face; on the parted, tenderly curved lips, and the golden eyes with their momentary touch of the idealist and the dreamer.
It seemed as if the quiet intensity of his regard drew her, for slowly she turned her head and met his gaze, flushing suddenly and faltering under it. The consciousness of him, of his nearness, swept her from head to foot, and it seemed to her as though now, in this moment, they were in closer touch, nearer understanding, than they had ever been.
The dreamer and idealist vanished and it was all at once just sheer woman, passionate and wistful and tremulous, and infinitely alluring, that looked at him out of the golden eyes.
With a stifled exclamation he caught her hands in his.
“Beloved——”