She did not speak.
"Sooner than have gone to you for sisterly help and comfort, such as you gave just now, I would have frozen in the snow, and been less cold. Unless you break down the bar you put between us, I never want to see your face again,—never, living or dead! I want no sham farce of friendship between us, benefits given or received: your hand touching mine as it might touch Bone's or David Gaunt's; your voice cooing in my ear as it did just now, cool and friendly. It maddened me. Rest can scarcely come from you to me, now."
"I understand you. I am to go back, then? It was a long road,—and cold, Douglas."
He stopped abruptly, looked at her steadily.
"Do not taunt me, child! I am a blunt man: what words say, they mean, to me. Do you love me, Theodora?"
She did not speak, drawn back from him in the opposite shadow of the door-way. He leaned forward, his breath coming hurried, low.
"Are you cold? See how shaggy this great cloak is,—is it wide enough for you and me? Will you come to me, Theodora?"
"I did come to you. Look! you put me back: 'There shall be no benefits given or received between us.'"
"How did you come?"—gravely, as a man should speak to a woman, childish trifling thrust aside. "How did you mean to take me home? As a pure, God-fearing woman should the man she loved? Into your heart, into your holiest thought? to gather strength from my strength, to make my power your power, your God my God? to be one with me? Was it so you came?"
He waited a minute. How cold and lonely the night was! How near rest and home came to him in this woman standing there! Would he lose them? One moment more would tell. When he spoke again, his voice was lower, feeble.