I knew that my tears, though I was trying to keep them back, were trickling down my cheeks. I saw that his face was all broken up as it had been the night before.
There was a moment of silence in which I was conscious of nothing but the fierce beating of my pulse, and then he raised my hand to his lips, dropped it gently and walked over to the door.
But after he had opened it he turned and looked at me. I looked at him, longing, craving, hungering for his love as for a flame at which my heart could warm itself.
Then came a blinding moment. It seemed as if in an instant he lost all control of himself, and his love came rushing upon him like a mighty surging river.
Flinging the door back he returned to me with long strides, and snatching me up in his great arms, he lifted me off my feet, clasped me tightly to him, kissed me passionately on the mouth and cried in a quivering, husky voice:
"You are my wife. I am your real husband. I am not leaving you because you are married to this brute, but for the sake of your soul. We love each other. We shall continue to love each other. No matter where you are, or what they do with you, you are mine and always will be."
My blood was boiling. The world was reeling round me. There was a roaring in my brain. All my spiritual impulses had gone. I was a woman, and it was the same to me as if the primordial man had taken possession of me by sheer force. Yet I was not afraid of that. I rejoiced in it. I wanted to give myself up to it.
But the next moment Martin had dropped me, and fled from the room, clashing the door behind him.
I felt as if a part of myself had been torn from my breast and had gone out with him.
The room seemed to become dark.