"That her mother, who is within a week of her confinement, knows nothing of this mystery."
I was silent. I might have said, "What mystery?" but I would only have irritated him.
"Rymer!"
I started. I was looking into the fire, with my ear altogether his, yet the strange mention of my name startled me.
"What could infamy—infamy, with just a beam of consciousness to tell it was infamy, and no more but that beam—think and feel to be worshipped by purity and love? I have shrunk from the embrace of that woman with a recoil equal to that produced by the enfolding of a snake."
"Though she knows not, and may never know, anything of this affair which has taken such a hold of you?" said I, rather as a speaking automaton, forced to vocabulate.
"The very reason why I recoil and shudder."
I had made a mistake—I would not risk another. "The man has got into the enfolding arms of mania," I thought, "and I must be chary."
"Will you keep in your remembrance," he continued, "the words uttered by Edith, and how she came by them? Will you?"
"Yes."