She stopped him with a frantic gesture.
“Don't! don't!” she wailed. “If you only knew; let me try to tell you—will you?” she urged pitifully. “It may be better if I tell someone—if I don't keep it all to myself, and think, and think.”
She clasped her hands tight, with the old gesture he remembered when she was struggling for self-control, and waited a moment.
Presently she began to speak in a low hurried tone: “It began before you came. I know now what the feeling was that I was afraid to acknowledge to myself. I used to try and smother it, I used to repeat things to myself all day—poems, stupid rhymes—anything to keep my thoughts quite underneath—but I—hated John before you came! We had been married nearly a year then. I never loved him. Of course you are going to say: 'Why did you marry him?'” She looked drearily over the placid sea. “Why did I marry him? I don't know; for the reason that hundreds of ignorant inexperienced girls marry, I suppose. My home wasn't a happy one. I was miserable, and oh,—restless. I wonder if men know what it feels like to be restless? Sometimes I think they can't even guess. John wanted me very badly—nobody wanted me at home particularly. There didn't seem to be any point in my life. Do you understand?... Of course being alone with him in that little camp in that silent plain”—she shuddered—“made things worse. My nerves went all to pieces. Everything he said—his voice—his accent—his walk—the way he ate—irritated me so that I longed to rush out sometimes and shriek—and go mad. Does it sound ridiculous to you to be driven mad by such trifles? I only know I used to get up from the table sometimes and walk up and down outside, with both hands over my mouth to keep myself quiet. And all the time I hated myself—how I hated myself! I never had a word from him that wasn't gentle and tender. I believe he loved the ground I walked on. Oh, it is awful to be loved like that, when you——” She drew in her breath with a sob. “I—I—it made me sick for him to come near me—to touch me.” She stopped a moment.
Broomhurst gently laid his hand on her quivering one. “Poor little girl!” he murmured.
“Then you came,” she said, “and before long I had another feeling to fight against. At first I thought it couldn't be true that I loved you—it would die down. I think I was frightened at the feeling; I didn't know it hurt so to love anyone.”
Broomhurst stirred a little. “Go on,” he said tersely.
“But it didn't die,” she continued in a trembling whisper, “and the other awful feeling grew stronger and stronger—hatred; no, that is not the word—loathing for—for—John. I fought against it. Yes,” she cried feverishly, clasping and unclasping her hands, “Heaven knows I fought it with all my strength, and reasoned with myself, and—oh, I did everything, but——” Her quick-falling tears made speech difficult.
“Kathleen!” Broomhurst urged desperately, “you couldn't help it, you poor child. You say yourself you struggled against your feelings—you were always gentle. Perhaps he didn't know.”
“But he did—he did,” she wailed, “it is just that. I hurt him a hundred times a day; he never said so, but I knew it; and yet I couldn't be kind to him—except in words—and he understood. And after you came it was worse in one way, for he knew. I felt he knew that I loved you. His eyes used to follow me like a dog's, and I was stabbed with remorse, and I tried to be good to him, but I couldn't.”