Again she stopped, with sentences fluttering, as it seemed, on the very edges of her lips. Her heart was at such fearful odds with her conscience, that she felt as if he must hear the clashing of the swords. And he did hear it. He would fain have cheered on both the combatants. Which did he wish should be the conqueror? He hardly knew.
“Yes?” he said.
“It is always so difficult to finish a sentence that begins with ‘but,’” she began; and for the first time her voice sounded tremulous. “When two people want each other very much, there is always something that ought to keep them apart—at least, I think so. God must love solitude; it is His gift to so many.” There were tears in her eyes.
“Why should we keep apart, Eve?”
“Because we should be too happy together, I suppose.”
He leaned suddenly forward and took both her hands in his. “How cold you are!” he said, startled.
The words seemed to brace her like a sea-breeze.
“Hugh,” she said, “I wish to tell you something. There is a ‘but’ in the sentence of my life.”
He drew her closer to him, with a strange impulse to be nearer the soul that was about to prove itself as noble as he desired. But that very act prevented the fulfilment of his wish. The touch of his hands, the eagerness of his eyes, gave the victory to her heart. She shut the lips that were speaking, and he kissed them. Kisses act as an opiate on a woman's conscience. Only when Eve felt his lips on hers did she know her own weakness. Sir Hugh having kissed her, waited for the telling of the secret. At that moment he might as well have sat down and waited for the millennium.