He put his arms about her and drew her head down on his shoulder.
“Nothing, nothing. You have given, you have done everything—too much, too much. I feel myself below you, I know myself below you—far, far down.”
“How can you say that? I couldn’t have loved you if it were so.” She spoke with complete conviction.
“Perhaps,” he said, in a low voice, “perhaps women never realise what their love can do. It might—it might—”
“What, Boris?”
“It might do what Christ did—go down into hell to preach to the—to the spirits in prison.”
His voice had dropped almost to a murmur. With one hand on her cheek he kept her face pressed down upon his shoulder so that she could not see his face.
“It might do that, Domini.”
“Boris,” she said, almost whispering too, for his words and manner filled her with a sort of awe, “I want you to tell me something.”
“What is it?”