“How did you win the right before?” asked Hilary, fixing his eyes on her; a fierce desire to know this possessed him.
Fleta started, turned towards him, and for a moment the proud imperiousness which ordinarily characterised her came over her form and her features. But in another moment it was gone. She stood before him, pale, gentle and sublime.
“I will tell you,” she said in a clear yet very low voice. “By taking your life.”
Hilary looked at her in complete perplexity and bewilderment.
“Do you not remember,” she said, “that forest, that new earth and sky, all so sweet and strong, that wealth of apricot blossom that came between us and the sky? Ah, Hilary, how fresh and vivid life was then, while we lived and loved and understood not that we did either! Was it not sweet? I loved you. Yes, I loved you—loved you.”
Her voice broke and trembled. Hilary’s numbed heart suddenly sprang again to life. Never had her voice contained such tones of tenderness and passion before.
“Oh, my dear, my Fleta, you love me still—now!”
He sprang towards her, but she seemed to sweep him aside with one majestic action of her bare arm.
“With that passion,” she said, with a pale solemnity, “I can never love now. I have not forgotten entirely what such love is—no, Hilary, I have not forgotten—else how should I have found you again among the multitudes of the earth?” She held out her hand to him, and, as he clasped it, he felt it was soft and tender, that the warm life blood of a young creature responded to his touch. “I knew you by your dear eyes which once were so full of pure love for me that they were like stars in my life.”
“What came between us?” asked Hilary.