Eve was silent.
"Do you hear?" he said.
"Yes, I hear."
"Then answer: have I got your love, or haven't I?"
"Whatever love you might have had," she broke out passionately, "you've taken care to kill."
"Kill!" he repeated. "It must have been precious delicate if it couldn't stand the answering of one question. Look here, Eve. When I told you I had given you my heart and every grain of love in it, I only spoke the truth; but unless you can give me yours as whole and as entire as I have given mine, 'fore God I'd rather jump off yonder rock than face the misery that would come upon us both. I know what 'tis to see another take what should be yours—to see another given what you are craving for. The torture of that past is dead and gone, but the devil it bred in me lives still, and woe betide the man or woman who rouses it!"
Instinctively Eve shrank back: the look of pent-up passion frightened her and made her whole body shiver.
"There! there! don't alarm yourself," said Adam, passing his hand over his forehead as if to brush away the traces which this outburst had occasioned: "I don't want to frighten you. All I want to know is, can you give me the love I ask of you?"
"I couldn't bear to be suspected," faltered Eve.
"Then act so that you would be above suspicion."