"No, no, my dear! my dear! You don't know what you are saying. I'll forget it all and take you away. You're ill, Marie Celeste. I've been a brute to you, I know, but I don't deserve this." He took her hands, such cold little hands they were, and pressed them to his face. "I love you, too," he said brokenly. "I think I must always have loved you, only I'm such a selfish swine . . . Marie Celeste, for God's sake say you didn't mean it? I love you! I'll give my life to make you happy. Say it isn't true—that you've just done it to torture me—to punish me?"
251 She tried to disengage her hands from his, but he held them fast. He went on pleading, praying, begging her, but she listened apathetically, her eyes averted from his bowed head.
She did not believe a word he was saying. The wall of her pride deafened her to the sincerity of his broken words. Her one emotion was the fierce, triumphant gladness that at last she could make him suffer as once he had made her.
Perhaps somewhere in a corner of that room the ghost of the child Marie Celeste stood weeping for the tragedy of it all—weeping because the woman Marie Celeste could so harden her heart to the grief of the man who had once been her idol.
Then suddenly Chris released her and stood up. His face was like gray marble as he took hers between his hands and looked down into her brown eyes.
"Is it—the truth, Marie Celeste?" he asked hoarsely. "Tell me the truth—that's all."
And Marie gave a little choking sound like a sob, and the lids fell over here eyes as she whispered:
"I have—told you."
That was all. Chris let her go. He fell back a step, his arms hanging limply at his sides. He was beaten and he knew it. No explanation he could make would be of any avail. She had shut him out of her heart for ever, and—for such is the tragedy of life—it was only when it was too late that he knew how much he loved her.
It seemed a long time before he asked: