“Domini,” he said, as if he had not heard her. “Domini, I—I’ve been to the priest to-night. I meant to confess to him.”
“To confess!” she said.
“This afternoon I asked him to hear my confession, but tonight I could not make it. I can only make it to you, Domini—only to you. Do you hear, Domini? Do you hear?”
Something in his face and in his voice terrified her heart. Now she felt as if she would stop him from speaking if she dared, but that she did not dare. His spirit was beyond domination. He would do what he meant to do regardless of her—of anyone.
“What is it, Boris?” she whispered. “Tell me. Perhaps I can understand best because I love best.”
He put his arms round her and kissed her, as a man kisses the woman he loves when he knows it may be for the last time, long and hard, with a desperation of love that feels frustrated by the very lips it is touching. At last he took his lips from hers.
“Domini,” he said, and his voice was steady and clear, almost hard, “you want to know what it is that makes me unhappy even in our love—desperately unhappy. It is this. I believe in God, I love God, and I have insulted Him. I have tried to forget God, to deny Him, to put human love higher than love for Him. But always I am haunted by the thought of God, and that thought makes me despair. Once, when I was young, I gave myself to God solemnly. I have broken the vows I made. I have—I have—”
The hardness went out of his voice. He broke down for a moment and was silent.
“You gave yourself to God,” she said. “How?”
He tried to meet her questioning eyes, but could not.