“Yet you married her—men say it was a love marriage. It was a marriage, anyway, and you can speak so calmly of her death?” Her tone was brooding. She sought understanding that should silence her own lingering doubt of him.
“Where lies the blame? Who made me what I am?” Again his bold arm encompassed her. Side by side they peered down through the gloom at the rushing waters, and he seized an image from them. “Our love is like that seething tide,” he said. “To resist it is to labour in agony awhile, and then to perish.”
“And to yield is to be swept away.”
“To happiness,” he cried, and reverted to his earlier prayer. “Say that when... that afterwards, I may claim you for my own. Be true to yourself, obey the voice of instinct, and so win to happiness.”
She looked up at him, seeking to scan the handsome face in that dim light that baffled her, and he observed the tumultuous heave of her white breast.
“Can I trust thee, Robin? Can I trust thee? Answer me true!” she implored him, adorably weak, entirely woman now.
“What does your own heart answer you?” quoth he, loaning close above her.
“I think I can, Robin. And, anyway, I must. I cannot help myself. I am but a woman, after all,” she murmured, and sighed. “Be it as thou wilt. Come to me again when thou art free.”
He bent lower, murmuring incoherently, and she put up a hand to pat his swarthy bearded cheek.
“I shall make thee greater than any man in England, so thou make me happier than any woman.”