Then, like a black, surging flood, the memory of all that kept them apart rushed over her and she drew back her arms, half-raised, falling limply to her sides. He made no effort to approach her. Only his eyes remained fixed on her, hungrily devouring every line of the beloved face.
"Why did you come?" she asked at last. Her voice seemed to herself as though it came from a great distance. It sounded like someone else speaking.
"I couldn't keep away. Life without you has become one long, unbearable hell."
He spoke with a strange, slow vehemence which seemed to hold the aggregated bitterness and pain of all those solitary months.
A shudder ran through her slight frame. Her own agony of separation had been measurable with his.
"But you said . . . at Tintagel . . . that we mustn't meet again. You shouldn't have come—oh, you shouldn't have come!" she cried tremulously.
He drew a step nearer to her.
"I had to come, I'm a man—not a saint!" he answered.
She looked up swiftly, trying to read what lay behind the harsh repression in his tones. She felt as though he were holding something in leash—something that strained and fought against restraint.
"I'm a man—not a saint!" The memory of his renunciation at King Arthur's Castle swept over her.