"I am not angry with you," she said, faintly surprised; "why should I be angry with you? Only, you see, Blair, I—I can't live. I simply can't live."
"You have got to live!—or I'll die," he said. "I love you, I tell you I love you!" His outstretched, trembling hands entreated hers, but she would not yield them to his touch; her shrinking movement away from him, her hands gripped together at her throat, filled him with absolute terror: "Elizabeth! don't—" She glanced at him with stony eyes. Blair was suffering. Why should he suffer? But his suffering did not interest her. "Please go away," she said, heavily.
He went. He dared not stay. He left her, going miserably down-stairs to make a pretense of eating some breakfast. But all the while he was arranging entreaties and arguments in his own mind. He went to the door of their room a dozen times that morning, but it was locked. No, she did not want any breakfast. Wouldn't she come out and walk? No, no, no. Please let her alone. And then in the afternoon; "Elizabeth, I must come in! You must have some food."
She let him enter; but she was indifferent alike to the food and to the fact that by this time there was, of course, a giggling consciousness in the hotel that the "bride and groom had had a rumpus." … "A nice beginning for a honeymoon," said the chambermaid, "locking that pretty young man out of her room!—and me with my work to do in there. Well, I'm sorry for him; I bet you she's a case."
Blair, too, was indifferent to anything ridiculous in his position; the moment was too critical for such self-consciousness. When at last he took a little tray of food to his wife, and knelt beside her, begging her to eat, he was appalled at the ruin in her face. She drank some tea to please him; then she said, pitifully:
"What shall we do, Blair?" That she should say "we" showed that these hours which had plowed her face had also sowed some seed of unselfishness in her broken soul.
"Darling," he said, tenderly, "have you forgiven me?"
At this she meditated for a minute, staring with big, anguished eyes straight ahead of her at nothing; "I think I have, Blair. I have tried to. Of course I know I was more wicked than you. It was more my doing than yours. Yes. I ought to ask you if you would forgive me."
"Elizabeth! Forgive you? When you made me so happy! Am I to forgive you for making me happy?"
"Blair," she said—she put the palms of her hands together, like a child; "Blair, please let me go." She looked at him with speechless entreaty. The old dominant Elizabeth was gone; here was nothing but the weak thing, the scared thing, pleading, crouching, begging for mercy. "Please, Blair, please—"