Catherine could hardly breathe. Every word had been like balm upon a wound—like a ray of intense light in the gloom about them. Oh, where was this softness bearing her—this emptiness of all will, of all individual power? She hid her eyes with her other hand, struggling to recall that far away moment in Marrisdale. But the mind refused to work. Consciousness seemed to retain nothing but the warm grasp of his hand—the tones of his voice.
He saw her struggle, and pressed on remorselessly.
'Speak to me—say one little kind word. Oh, you cannot send me away miserable and empty!'
She turned to him, and laid her trembling free hand on his arm. He clasped them both with rapture.
'Give me a little time.'
'No, no,' he said, and it almost seemed to her that he was smiling: 'time for you to escape me again, my wild mountain bird; time for you to think yourself and me into all sorts of moral mists! No, you shall not have it. Here, alone with God and the dark—bless me or undo me. Send me out to the work of life maimed and sorrowful, or send me out your knight, your possession, pledged——'
But his voice failed him. What a note of youth, of imagination, of impulsive eagerness there was through it all! The more slowly-moving inarticulate nature was swept away by it. There was but one object clear to her in the whole world of thought or sense, everything else had sunk out of sight—drowned in a luminous mist.
He rose and stood before her as he delivered his ultimatum, his tall form drawn up to its full height. In the east, across the valley, above the farther buttress of High Fell, there was a clearer strip of sky, visible for a moment among the moving storm clouds, and a dim haloed moon shone out in it. Far away a white-walled cottage glimmered against the fell; the pools at their feet shone in the weird passing light.
She lifted her head, and looked at him, still irresolute. Then she too rose, and helplessly, like some one impelled by a will not her own, she silently held out to him two white trembling hands.
'Catherine—my angel—my wife!'