“Magda!”
She never knew whether he really uttered her name or whether it was only the voiceless, clamorous cry of his whole consciousness—of a man’s passionate demand for the woman who is mate of his soul and body.
But she answered its appeal, her innermost being responding to the claim of it. All recollection of self, of the dimming of her beauty, even of the great gulf of months that lay between them, crowded with mistakes and failure, was burned away in the white-hot flame of love that blazed up within her.
She ran to him, and that white, searing flame found its expression in the dear human tenderness of the little cry that broke from her as he turned his gaunt face towards her.
“Oh, Saint Michel! Saint Michel! How dreadfully ill you look! Oh, my dear—sit down! You’re not fit to stand!”
But when that first instinctive cry had left her lips, memory came flooding over her once more. She shrank back from him, covering her face with her hands, agonisingly conscious of the change in herself—of that shadowing of her beauty which the sensitiveness of a woman in love had so piteously magnified.
Then, drawing her hands slowly down, she braced herself to say what must be said.
“You are free of me, Michael.” She spoke in a curious, still voice. “I know Marraine and Gillian between them have brought you back. But you are free of me. As you see—I shall never do any more harm. No other man will come to grief for the sake of the Wielitzska. . . . I determined that as I had made others pay, so I would pay. I think”—suddenly moving towards the window and standing full in the brilliant sunlight—“I think you’ll agree I’ve settled the bill.”
Michael came to her side.
“I want you for my wife,” he said simply.