He kissed her shoulder. She shivered.
"My darling," he said, passionately.
She looked at him dully; "I wish you would go away."
"Elizabeth, let me tell you how I love you."
"Love me?" she said; "me?"
"Elizabeth!" he protested; "you are an angel, and I love you—no man ever loved a woman as I love you."
In her abasement she never thought of reproaching him, of saying "if you loved me, why did you betray me?" She had not gone as far as that yet. Her fall had been so tremendous that if she had any feeling about him, it was nothing more than the consciousness that he too, had gone over the precipice. "Please go away," she said.
"Dearest, listen; you are my wife. If—if I hurried you too much, you will forgive me because I loved you so? I didn't dare to wait, for fear—" he stumbled on the confession which his god had wrung from him, but which must not be made to her. Elizabeth's heavy eyes were suddenly keen.
"Fear of what?"
"Oh, don't look at me that way! I love you so that it kills me to have you angry at me!"