Already, his tone has changed. His arms seem to be slackening their close hold of me.
"Do not loose me!" cry I, passionately; "hold me tight, or I can never tell you—how could you expect me? Well, that night—you know as well as I do—I lied."
"You did?"
How hard and quick he is breathing! I am glad I cannot see his face.
"I was there! I did cry! she did see me—"
I stop abruptly, choked by tears, by shame, by apprehension.
"Go on!" (spoken with panting shortness).
"He met me there!" I say, tremulously. "I do not know whether he did it on purpose or not, and said dreadful things! must I tell you them?" (shuddering)—"pah! it makes me sick—he said" (speaking with a reluctant hurry)—"that he loved me, and that I loved him, and that I hated you, and it took me so by surprise—it was all so horrible, and so different from what I had planned, that I cried—of course I ought not, but I did—I roared!"
There does not seem to me any thing ludicrous in this mode of expression, neither apparently does there to him.
"Well?"