He glanced at her swiftly, and down again, like a frightened child. Yet even in that glance he could see that it was all that she could do to force herself to speak; and by that look he understood for the first time something of that which she was suffering.
"You know first," she said, "that I am promised to you. I hold that promise as sacred as anything on earth can be."
Her voice shook a little. The boy bowed his head again. She went on:
"But there are some things," she said, "more sacred than anything on earth—those things that come from heaven. Now, I wish to say this—and then have done with it: that if such should be God's will, I would not hold you for a day. We are Catholics, you and I…. Your father—"
Her voice broke; and she stopped; yet without leaving go of her hold upon herself. Only she could not speak for a moment.
Then a great fury seized on the boy. It was one of those angers that for a while poison the air and turn all things sour; yet without obscuring the mind—an anger in which the angry one strikes first at that which he loves most, because he loves it most, knowing, too, that the words he speaks are false. For this, for the present, was the breaking-point in the lad. He had suffered torments in his soul, ever since the hour in which he had ridden into the gate of his own home after his talk in the empty chapel; he had striven to put away from him that idea for which the girl's words had broken an entrance into his heart. And now she would give him no peace; she continued to press on him from without that which already pained him within; so he turned on her.
"You wish to be rid of me!" he cried fiercely.
She looked at him with her lips parted, her eyes astonished, and her face gone white.
"What did you say?" she said.
His conscience pierced him like a sword. Yet he set his teeth.