“Tell me the worst, Gabriel.”
“Thank God, the worst is not the worst in that sense.”
“Ah!”
“It is not too late; I am wise in time. It is we who must suffer, in our hearts, not in our names. Would to God I had not been such a fool as to make you love me.”
“Ah! say not that.”
“Can I forgive my manhood this?”
She grew calm quite suddenly, and went back to the seat under the yews, like a woman who recovers gradually her sanity of soul. She was silent awhile, looking into the long grass with wide, luminous eyes that seemed to search and compass the future. It was her ordeal of fire; like the true woman she was, she emerged scathless.
“Gabriel,” she said, presently.
He came two steps nearer, looking in her face as one who seeks inspiration.
“I understand you now. It was all so sudden and terrible; forgive me for seeming desperate.”