Her transparent skin glowed crimson with the rush of blood. Her bosom laboured with the hurry of her breathing. Her white lids veiled her eyes, or the sudden terrible change in Saxham's face might have wrung from her a cry of terror and alarm. But he mastered the raging jealousy that tore him, and said, with a jarring note of savage irony in the voice that had always spoken to her gently until then:
"Would I be content to enter, with you for my partner, into a marriage that should be practically no marriage at all—a formal contract that is not wedlock? That might never change as Time went on, and alter into the close union that physically and mentally makes happiness for men and women who love? Is that what you ask me, Miss Mildare?"
She looked at him full and bent her head. And the man's heart, that had throbbed so wildly, stopped beating with a sudden jerk, and the divine fire that burned and tingled in his blood died out, and the cold sickness of baffled hope weighed on him like a mantle of lead. And the voice that had whispered to him so alluringly, telling him that it was not too late, that he might even yet win this virginal pure, sweetly-budding maiden, and know the bliss of being loved at last, sank into silence. His face was set like granite, and as grey. His eyes burned darkly under his heavy brows. He waited, sombrely and hopelessly, for her to speak again.
"There are such marriages——?"
The question was diffidently and timidly put. He answered:
"Assuredly there are. But not between those who are—physically and mentally, sane and healthy men and women,—at least, in my experience. One case, of three I am at liberty to quote, was that of an aged and wealthy woman of position and a young and rising public man."
"Were—weren't they happy?"
The face of the inward, unseen Saxham was twisted in a miserable grin, but the outward man preserved immobility.
"He enjoyed life. She sat by, and saw, every day joining nearer, her death, that was to leave him free."
"And the others?"