A “yes” came from her like the last sad whisper of a breeze.
“And he used to kiss you—of course he did.”
“Yes.”
“And perhaps you allowed him a more free manner in his love-making than I have shown in mine.”
“No, I did not.” This was rather more alertly spoken.
“But he adopted it without being allowed?”
“Yes.”
“How much I have made of you, Elfride, and how I have kept aloof!” said Knight in deep and shaken tones. “So many days and hours as I have hoped in you—I have feared to kiss you more than those two times. And he made no scruples to...”
She crept closer to him and trembled as if with cold. Her dread that the whole story, with random additions, would become known to him, caused her manner to be so agitated that Knight was alarmed and perplexed into stillness. The actual innocence which made her think so fearfully of what, as the world goes, was not a great matter, magnified her apparent guilt. It may have said to Knight that a woman who was so flurried in the preliminaries must have a dreadful sequel to her tale.
“I know,” continued Knight, with an indescribable drag of manner and intonation,—“I know I am absurdly scrupulous about you—that I want you too exclusively mine. In your past before you knew me—from your very cradle—I wanted to think you had been mine. I would make you mine by main force. Elfride,” he went on vehemently, “I can’t help this jealousy over you! It is my nature, and must be so, and I HATE the fact that you have been caressed before: yes hate it!”