"Wasn't it enough that he came between you and me, and that our love——"
"Love! Helena! Helena! Can you talk of our love here ... now?"
She dropped her head before his flashing eyes, and again he reached over to her and said in the same breathless whisper—
"Is this love ... for me ... to become the wife of another man? ... Helena, what are you saying?"
She did not speak; only her hard breathing told how much she suffered.
"Then think of the other man! His wife! When a woman becomes a man's wife they are one. And to marry a man in order to ... to ... Oh, it is impossible! I cannot believe it of you, Helena."
Suddenly, without warning, she burst into tears, for something in the tone of his voice rather than the strength of his words had made her feel the shame of the position she occupied in his eyes.
After a moment she recovered herself, and, in wild anger at her own weakness, she flamed out at him, saying that if she was Ishmael's wife it was in name only, that if she had married Ishmael it was only as a matter of form, at best a betrothal, in order to meet his own wish and to make it possible for her to go on with her purpose.
"As for love ... our love ... it is not I who have been false to it. No, never for one single moment ... although ... in spite of everything ... for even when you were gone ... when you had abandoned me ... in the hour of my trouble, too ... and I had lost all hope of you ... I——"
"Then why, Helena? You hated Ishmael and wished to put him down while you thought he was coming between you and me. But why ... when all seemed to be over between us——"