He was instantly across the room, beside her. “Yes, yes, I know it!” But she shrank away.
“You tried to make me believe you cared for me, by everything you could do. And I did believe you then; and yes, I believed you afterwards, when I didn't know what to believe. You were the one true thing in the world to me. But it seems that you didn't believe it yourself.”
“That I didn't believe it myself? That I—I don't know what you mean.”
“You took a week to think it over! I have had a week, too, and I have thought it over, too. You have come too late.”
“Too late? You don't, you can't, mean—Listen to me, Lydia; I want to tell you—”
“No, there is nothing you can tell me that would change me. I know it, I understand it all.”
“But you don't understand what kept me.”
“I don't wish to know what made you break your word. I don't care to know. I couldn't go back and feel as I did to you. Oh, that's gone! It isn't that you did not come—that you made me wait and suffer; but you knew how it would be with me after I got here, and all the things I should find out, and how I should feel! And you stayed away! I don't know whether I can forgive you, even; oh, I'm afraid I don't; but I can never care for you again. Nothing but a case of life and death—”
“It was a case of life and death!”
Lydia stopped in her reproaches, and looked at him with wistful doubt, changing to a tender fear.