“I could not stay away, Norman. Oh, I shall die if you do not take me back! I am your wife—your wife!” she cried, passionately.
He stood with his hand upon the door-knob, looking at her. She knew that if she came a step nearer to him he would go out.
“Oh, Norman, do not be so cruelly hard. Do you remember how you used to love me? Is it all dead now? Have you found a new love?” she asked, pathetically; and he shook his head.
“I have found no other love. I have no faith in women. I shun them with the single exception of my mother,” he said, sternly. “But the old love is dead, Camille. You murdered it that day by the river. You can never resurrect it from its bloody grave.”
She shuddered.
“Oh, Norman, you were mistaken. I had lost my ring. It was that I was talking of—only that,” she cried, beseechingly.
“Does my mother know you are here, Camille?”
“Yes. I am here by her consent. She pities me, she sympathizes with me. She longs for you to forgive me, Norman.”
He stood in silence a moment, but there was no relenting on his stern, white face, only trouble and disgust.
“I am sorry this has happened,” he said, slowly and sadly at last. “I have tried to forget you, Camille, as the greatest kindness I could show to you, for my thoughts of you are always mixed with shuddering horror and disgust. Remember, I know you as my mother does not know you, as the world does not know you. How can you think to move my heart toward you again? I pity you, I pray often that Heaven will make you repent and grant you pardon for your terrible crime, but to love you, to trust you again you must be mad to dream of it!”