She hung her head. On the edge of the hearth-rug she traced a stupid figure with the toe of her bead-embroidered slipper.
"I can't tell," she said, "I've tried. I've tried very hard——"
"To love me?"
"No." She wished to be honest; she determined upon being honest. She owed him that, even should it hurt him. "No," she said, "not to love you; for if I had to try to love you, it wouldn't be real love at all, would it? What I tried to find out was whether I do love you now."
It was on his lips to say that, as surely as trying to love would not create love, so, if love was, it need not be sought. But she raised her face when she ended, and, when the light fell upon that, he forgot all casuistry. Her slim figure just entering upon womanhood, her blue-black hair, her damp red lips and her great dark eyes: she was as he had seen her first, like an evening in the woods, he reflected: warm and dusky and bathed in the light of stars.
Quite suddenly and wholly without premeditation he came to her and seized her hot palms in his cool hands. For years he had mastered passion; now, at this sight of her after the two weeks' separation, passion mastered him. The rein had snapped.
"Muriel," he said, "I can make you love me. You don't know—there are things you don't know. I can make you love me. Do you hear that? Muriel? Answer! Do you understand? I will make you love me. I will!"
She looked up at his face. It was alight as she had never yet seen any man's. Then, before she had gathered her breath to give him an answer, she was seized by him. She was crushed to him; she was held tight in his strong arms. She was hurt, and, as she was hurt, their lips met.
The miracle—oh, she was sure now that it was the miracle—happened. Something new clutched at her throat. Something new, wonderfully, terrifyingly, deliciously new, gripped at her heart and set her whole body athrill and trembling. The blood pounded in her temples. She tried to look at him, but a violet mist covered her eyes and hid him.
"Kiss me!" she was whispering as his lips left hers. "Kiss me again. I know now. I love you!"