He was looking fully at her, voice and eyes alike charged with meaning which could not be mistaken. She did not flinch. Her brown eyes told him that she had reflected, that in returning she was fully conscious of the finality of her action.
"I had not to consider that," was her instant reply. "I had to do what I knew to be right. I had to keep my word."
She spoke most evidently without any desire to create an effect. The listening man restrained himself with difficulty, but held on for a moment, to elucidate one more point.
"You came back, perhaps, in order to lay the case before me? To see if I would set you free?"
"Certainly not," was the steady answer. "You and I made an agreement. You have kept your half—you have done all you promised; but I"—the colour rushed over her face—"I have not done any of my share."
Not at all theatrically, but as naturally as an old Italian peasant will kiss the Madonna's feet, he slipped from his chair to his knees. So quietly that it did not startle Virginia at all, he took up one of the hands that lay in her lap and raised it to his lips. The action, so unlike him, the silence in which he performed it, amazed her so that she neither moved nor spoke. He replaced her hand, laying it tenderly down, and seemed as though he would speak, from his lowly position at her feet. Then, with his own brusque suddenness, he rose, and stood beside her, almost over her.
"God has used me better than I deserved," he muttered gruffly. "He has let me prove—prove to the hilt—that there is such a thing as a perfectly noble woman. Virginia, there shall be a way out for you. If you think my word of any value, I give it solemnly. I will make things right somehow. I may not be able to do it at once; I must think the matter over carefully. In the meantime, I want you to understand my position." He paused a moment, and then spoke more fluently, as if the thing he expressed had long been in his mind and so came easily from his lips. "When I first met you I had been, to all intents and purposes, a madman for twenty years. I had not been twenty-four hours your husband before I came to myself. It was as though—only I can't express it—as though your innocence were a looking-glass, in which I saw the kind of thing I am. Ever since, I have been your humble servant. I—I tried to let you see this, but of course it was hopeless. You were ill, and they told me to keep out of your way. Then, when you left me ... your heart was full of your little sister, occupied with your own grief. I couldn't force on you the consideration of mine."
He paused, and she knew it was to summon command of his voice.
"And the idea came to me that I would wait—that I would find out, for a certainty, that you really were as fine as I had grown to think you. I wanted to prove that you were heroic enough to come back to—to the sort of thing which, as you believed, awaited you here. So I wouldn't write to you as I longed to ... I just kept silence ... and you came. You are here ... I am such a fool at saying what I mean, but I must make you understand that, for so long as it may be necessary for you to remain, you are sacred. I—I will ask you to let me eat with you, and be with you sometimes, because of—er—the household. But once for all, I want you to feel quite sure that you have nothing to fear from me."
Thus, for the second time in her knowledge of him, the man broke through his taciturnity. She could not know that this outburst was far more characteristic of the real Osbert Gaunt than the sullen, frozen surface hitherto presented.