Isabel rose also and faced him. ‘And when you look at me?’ she asked.
‘When I look at you,’ he groaned—‘when I look at you, every fibre of me longs for you and cries out for you. And yet I swear I hate you, Isabel.’
‘Go on hating me, then, like that,’ answered Isabel triumphantly. ‘You have conquered me now. I feel that I cannot get near you again. For I know what that hatred means. And some day I shall win. I am bound to. You belong to me. You are me. You recognised that a few minutes ago. But now you are a fool. You refuse your happiness. Well, one day I shall bring you to it again.’
‘Let me go, Isabel,’ he pleaded. ‘Let us try to do the little best we can, you and I. Don’t make our lives more difficult or shameful than they need be. Oh yes, I know that you have everything in your power—too well I know it.’
He spoke wearily in a low, broken voice that seemed to foreshadow the end of his resistance. As his weakness grew manifest Isabel’s strength grew greater.
‘There is no escape from me,’ she said. ‘Remember I am yourself. And I shall always be there at your side, in your house, waiting, waiting till you wake up again from this foolish dream.’
His struggle had suddenly collapsed into the helplessness of fatigue. Even at this defiance of hers he made no sign of revolt. ‘Oh, God,’ he said, ‘how can I get rid of you? What chance am I to have? But it is no use talking. One can’t talk the same language as you—one can’t talk in the same century. It is hopeless, I know. Your ideas are as savage as Queen Isabel’s—you have got all that fearful barbarous selfishness of hers, and one’s only chance of making you understand would be to talk to you in the old French that she must have spoken.’ His voice trailed off into silence.
Isabel drew closer to him, and laid her hands softly on his arm. ‘Kingston——’ she began.
He shook off her light touch, and looked her full in the face. His eyes were blazing, and his manner had the restrained roughness of passion held hard in leash.
‘Isabel,’ he said, ‘if you touch me, I swear to God I love you so much that I shall kill you—here and now, with my naked hands.’