Rivière's blood leapt hot in his veins and he answered recklessly: "Because I loved you! Loved you from the first moment we met! And I hadn't the right to love you. I wasn't running away from you—I was running away from myself."
"Now I see. I thought then.... And when you offered to devote your life to me? You remember that, don't you?" She was trembling as she spoke.
"I meant every word of it!"
"It was not pity for me? I want the truth—nothing but the truth! Oh, if I could only see you now, to know if it were the truth!" Her hands went up impulsively to the bandages over her eyes, then dropped helplessly to her side as she remembered they must on no account be touched.
"As God hears me, it was not pity but love!" he answered with passionate sincerity.
"Then you give me something to live for!"
Her meaning thundered upon him.
"You intended to——?"
"Yes."
"When?"