Her eyes sink before that gaze, and all the lustre of the summer night seems to sway and reel amidst the leafy shadows.
"Yes—I love you," she says, with sudden desperation. "It is no new thing to tell you—Heaven forgive me for saying it! Is my shame complete—is there any other confession you wish to force from me?"
His arms release her as suddenly as they had clasped her. "No," he says. "Do not speak so bitterly. I am a brute, I know; but I was always a bad fellow, according to your mother. After all, it is a poor satisfaction to know we are both in the same boat. It makes my pain no less to know you share it. Well, I suppose I have about done for myself now. I may go galloping to the downward road as fast as I like. I have insulted you, and I have made an utter fool of myself. I'd give a great deal not to have done it, but it's too late to say that now. Will you ever forgive me, Lorry?"
The old pet-name of their childish days slips out unconsciously. It moves Lauraine almost to tears. How sad, how changed, how unutterably dreary is life now! "I have little to forgive," she says unsteadily. "I share your fault. Only—only——"
"Hush!" he says, with sudden fierceness. "I know what you are going to say. My folly has shut me out from the only happiness I have. How cruel a good woman can be."
"It is not cruelty—it is safety," murmurs Lauraine, with faltering voice. "How can we meet and face each other in the world knowing what we know? Friendship between us is impossible—you have made it so—and there can be—nothing more."
"I would rather die than lose you," says Keith passionately. "If you were happy it would be different; but you are not, and your husband is a blackguard, and half London knows it—even your precious mother. It was bad enough to stand aside and see you sold to him, as you were; but it was nothing to what it is now—now, when I know you are not even happy. Oh, Lauraine, God knows I would have made you that, if it lay in any mortal's power!"
The hot colour comes into the beautiful, pale face on which his eyes are fixed. She holds out her hands entreatingly.
"Say no more—it can do no good. Whatever his faults are, I am his wife. Nothing can alter that!"
"Something can," is trembling on Keith's lips, but he does not utter it. Lauraine is not a woman to be trifled with, and he dares not breathe a word that would insult her dignity. All that is boiling in his heart he dares not even think. He knows the purity of her soul and life, and from that pedestal he cannot drag her down to listen to the baser temptings that he might have whispered to another woman.