"Why do you come to me and tell me this?" she says piteously. "Of what use is it?"
"None, I suppose. I only wanted to say I took your advice; that with might and main I set myself to work to care for Nan. I might as well have saved myself the trouble. There are times when a devil within me rises and tempts me to kill her: when I hate myself for deceiving her, and her for being deceived; when—— But why pain your ears with such folly? This thing is too hard for me. I cannot do it, Lorry—I cannot."
"Oh, Keith!" It is such a sorrowful little cry. It is just as when in their childish days some deed or freak of his had grieved his little playmate's gentle heart. It thrills through him with a pain that is intolerable.
"For God's sake, don't speak like that—don't pity me!" he cries wildly. "It is more than I can bear. Oh, Lorry, don't think I have come here to-day to distress you with the old sorrow. It is not that, indeed. I only wanted to say that I have brought double dishonour on my head by trying to do what you seemed to think would cure me; to ask you if you would have me go through with this horrible farce—for, as there is a Heaven above us, I would sooner die the worst death you could name, than speak such a lie in face of God and man as I should speak did I promise to be a husband to—Nan." His voice is low and husky, and the words come out with fierce, unstudied eloquence.
Lauraine's heart aches as she listens, as she looks. She is utterly at a loss what to say.
"I parted from you in anger. I spoke roughly, cruelly. I said I would never come to you again," he goes on, looking at her white face—his own as white and sorrowful. "I have longed often to ask your pardon. I do it now. There is but one course open to me. I must leave this country. I must leave any place that has a memory of—you. I think sometimes I shall go mad if I don't. I think you would be shocked, Lorry, if you could look into my soul and see the utter blankness there. I am not old, and there is no ice in my veins yet, and forgetfulness won't come for trying any more than—love. Oh, if it only would—if it only would!"
For an instant a sob rises in his throat and chokes his utterance. He rises, ashamed of his weakness, and paces the room with hurried, uneven steps.
"I am forgetting myself. I did not mean to say such things," he says presently. "When I am with you I can think of nothing else. Oh, my darling! how could you have given yourself away from me? Will ever any man love you as I have done, and do!"
Lauraine's heart is rent asunder by the fierce, unstudied pathos of his words. She sees that her own weakness has wrecked two lives effectually, and now her whole soul is filled with anguish and with dread.
"I can see at last that the only course for me to pursue is complete avoidance of your presence," he goes on, coming over to the mantelpiece as he speaks and leaning his arm upon it so as to keep his face out of her sight. "We should be all, or nothing, to each other; and I being mad and reckless, and you good and pure, it is easy to see which of the two is our fate."