'David!'
She bit her lip proudly. Then the tears welled up into her grey eyes, and she looked round at him—hesitated—began and stopped again—then broke into irrevocable confession.
'David!—Monsieur David!—how can it go on? Voyons—I said to myself yesterday—I am torturing him and myself—I cannot make him happy—it is not in me—not in my destiny. It must end—it must,—it must, for both our sakes. But then first,—first—'
'Be quiet!' he said, laying an iron hand on her arm. 'I knew it all.'
And he turned away from her, covering his face.
This time she made no attempt to caress him. She clasped her hands round her knees and remained quite still, gazing—yet seeing nothing—into the green depths which five minutes before had been to her a torturing ecstasy of colour and light. The tears which had been gathering fell, the delicate lip quivered.
Struck by her silence at last, he looked up—watched her a moment—then he dragged himself up to her and knelt beside her.
'Have I made you so miserable?' he said, under his breath.
'It is—it is—the irreparableness of it all,' she answered, half sobbing. 'No undoing it ever, and how a woman glides into it, how lightly, knowing so little!—thinking herself so wise! And if she has deceived herself, if she is not made for love, if she has given herself for so little—for an illusion—for a dream that breaks and must break—how dare the man reproach her, after all?'
She raised her burning eyes to him. The resentment in them seemed to be more than individual, it was the resentment of the woman, of her sex.