The words sounded so clear and distinct that Jean half raised her head to see who spoke them. And then, in an overwhelming rush of memory, she recognised that it was no actual voice she heard but the mental echo of her own words to Nick—to Nick at the time when he had been passing through a like fire of fierce temptation.
How easily, in her young, untried ignorance, the words had fallen from her lips as she had urged Nick to renounce his fixed resolve! Such eminently wise and excellent counsel! And how little—how crassly little had she realised at the time the huge demand that she was making!
She had spoken as though it were comparatively easy to reject the wrong and choose the right—to follow the stern and narrow path of Duty, through the mists and utter darkness that enshrouded it, up to those shining heights which lie beyond human sight—the outposts of Eternal Heaven itself.
Easy!.... Oh, God!....
When at last Jean uncovered her face and lifted it to meet the set gaze of the man beside her, it was wan and ravaged “the face of one who has come through some fierce purgatory of torment.”
“Well?” he demanded, his voice roughened because he found himself unable to steady it with that strained and altered face upturned to his. “Well? Are you going to send me back to Nesta?”
She did not answer his question. Instead, she put another.
“Do you think she—loves you?”
He stared.