Before the blonde loveliness of the Saxon girl, Romaine paled, while a shudder rent her from head to foot. She sighed heavily, and turned to Morton with a piteous gesture.
"My dear Loyd," she murmured sadly, "never again call me Paula."
He recoiled from her as though each innocent word had stung him to the quick.
"My God!" he cried, "if I thought—" when he checked himself before her look of abject terror, came to her, and took her in his arms. "My darling," he faltered, "if you only knew what agony the mere suspicion of your doubt causes me, you would have pity upon me!"
He spoke with such suppressed passion, with such wild anguish in his haggard eyes, that her alarm faded to helpless amazement.
"I have expressed no doubt," she murmured; "what can you mean?"
"Oh, I do not know," he moaned. "Perhaps I am not quite myself; all the happiness of this day has unnerved me. But—but you bid me never to call you Paula again; what do you mean?"
"Why, simply that I am so inferior to her in loveliness," she answered with a flurried smile.
"Did I ask, did I expect, you to look like her?" he demanded fiercely. "Can you not understand that the flesh is dust, and to dust returns; but the soul is immortal? Paula's body is dust, but her immortal soul lives—lives, not in the realms of bliss to which it fled, released, but—where does it live to-day, at this very instant? I want to hear you tell me!"
He caught her delicate shoulders between his strong white hands and glared like some ravenous animal into her startled face.