“I do love you,” she answered earnestly. “But it isn’t the you I love asking me this, Blaise. It’s some other man—a stranger——”
“If you love me, you’ll come,” he reiterated doggedly. “I can’t live without you, Jean. I want you—oh, heart’s beloved, if you knew—” And the burning, passionate words, the pent-up love and longing of months of separation and despair, came pouring from his lips—beseeching and demanding, wringing her heart, pulling at the love within her that ached to give him the answer which he craved.
“Oh, Blaise, dearest of all—hush! Hush!” She checked him brokenly, with quivering lips. “I can’t go with you. It wouldn’t bring us happiness. Ah, listen to me, dear!” She came close to him and laid her hands imploringly on his arm, lifting her white, stricken face to his. “It would only spoil our love—to take it like that when we have no right to. It would smirch and soil it, make it something different. I think—I think, in the end, Blaise, it would kill it.”
“Nothing would ever kill my love for you,” he exclaimed passionately. “Jean, little Jean, think of what our life together might be—the glory and beauty of it—just you and I in our House of Dreams!”
She caught her breath. Oh! Why did he make it so hard for her? With every fibre of her being yearning towards him she must refuse, deny him, drive him away from her.
“No, no!” she cried tremulously. “We could never reach our House of Dreams that way—Oh, I know it! At least, not the sort of House of Dreams that would be worth anything to you or me, Blaise. It would only be a sham, a make-believe. You can’t build true on a rotten foundation.... Don’t ask me any more, dear. It’s so hard—so hard to keep on saying no when everything in me wants to say yes. But I must say it. And you... you must go back to Nesta.”
Her voice almost failed her. She could feel her strength ebbing with every moment that he stayed beside her. She knew that she would not be able to resist his pleading much longer. Her own heart was fighting against her—fighting on his side!
He saw her weakness and caught at it eagerly.
“Do you know what you’re asking?” he demanded hoarsely. “Do you know what you are sending me back to? Our life together—Nesta’s and mine—has been simple hell upon earth. I obeyed you—and I took her back. But I have done no good by it. She is as weak and worthless as she ever was. Our days are one continual round of bickering and quarrels.” His face darkened. “And she is not satisfied! Her nominal position as my wife does not con tent her. Do you understand what that must mean—if I go back?” He paused, his eyes bent steadily upon her. “Jean”—very low—“now that you know—will you still send me back to Nesta? Or will you come with me and let us find our happiness together?”
He watched the scarlet flood surge into her face and then retreat, leaving it a pallid white.