"I am late—you have waited for me, dear? Oh, Vera, how glad I am to be with you!"
There was a dangerous tenderness in his voice that frightened her. She tried to draw away her hands.
"I had something for you, or I should not have sent—please, Captain Kynaston—Maurice—please let my hands go."
He was alone under the star-flecked heavens with the woman he loved, there was all the witchery of the pale moonlight about her, all the sweet perfumes of the summer night to intensify the fascination of her presence. There was a nameless glamour in the luminous dimness—a subtle seduction to the senses in the silence and the solitude; a bird chirruped once among the tangled roses overhead, and a soft, sighing breeze fluttered for one instant amid its long, trailing branches. And then, God knows how it came to pass, or what madness possessed the man; but suddenly there was no longer any faith, or honour, or truth for him—nothing on the face of the whole earth but Vera.
He caught her passionately in his arms, and showered upon her lips the maddest, wildest kisses that man ever gave to woman.
For one instant she lay still upon his heart; all the fury of her misery was at rest—all the storm of her sorrow was at peace—for one instant of time she tasted of life's sublimest joy ere the waters of blackness and despair closed in once more over her soul. For one instant only—then she remembered, and withdrew herself shudderingly from his grasp.
"For God's sake, have pity upon me, Maurice!" she wailed. It was the cry of a broken heart that appealed to his manhood and his honour more surely and more directly than a torrent of reproach or a storm of indignation.
"Forgive me," he murmured, humbly; "I am a brute to you. I had forgotten myself. I ought to have spared you, sweet. See, I have let you go; I will not touch you again; but it was hard to see you alone, to be near you, and yet to remember how we are parted. Vera, I have ruined your life; it is wonderful that you do not hate me."
"A true woman never hates the man who has been hard on her," she answered, smiling sadly.
"If it is any comfort to you to know it, I too am wretched; now it is too late: I know that my life is spoilt also."