And then he had urged marriage.
“It is what I have come to tell you, Kitty. Let me make amends for the past by devoting my life to your happiness. I am not right bad all through. I'll begin again to love you as I did when first I saw you in that white dress, among the roses of the verandah.”
She had smiled, shaken her head, it could never be. She was quite happy. He had done his part, she was satisfied with his intentions. But the amends she claimed was that he should never seek to see her again. Only on that condition, that he left Geneva at once, looking upon this as a final parting, could she give him her full, unqualified forgiveness. He had insisted, wearying her. She had risen, held out her hand to him.
“You must go. It is a generous impulse that urges you to make reparation in this manner, not love—”
She paused for a breath, instinctively trying him with a touchstone, and smiling as it failed to draw the response of passion.
“Let your conscience be easy. You wish to serve me—you have a trust—my honour—you can cherish it.”
And then the element of grotesque folly, that underlay this man's nature, had prompted him to satisfy the childlike craving for plenary shrift and absolution. He told her that he had confessed in an unguarded moment to Chetwynd, taken him further into his confidence. At first she had scarcely understood him—the suggestion had stunned, paralyzed her for a few seconds, during which his words seemed to strike her senses dimly, like rain in the night. The complete realization came with a rush—the shame, the degradation—the abyss that he had opened at her feet. Sudden overpowering hate of him had flooded her senses and burst all barriers of reserve and self-control.
He had committed the Unpardonable Sin, in a woman's eyes—the crime against her honour. To have won her, kissed her, cast her aside—that is in the heart of a woman to forgive. But not the other. He had betrayed her. Not only that, but he had stabbed to the very soul of her love. The sight of the weak man, who had added this crowning outrage to the havoc he had wrought in her life, goaded her into madness. The very tenderness, with which she had but lately regarded him, made the revulsion all the stronger.
“Oh God! I could kill you! I could kill you!” she had cried.
He had turned white to the lips, scared at the transformation of the calm, subdued woman into the fierce, quivering creature with glittering eyes and passion-strung words. The eternal, wild, savage woman, repressed for years in the depths of her soul, had leapt out upon him to rend him in her mad anger. She had pointed to the door, stamping her foot, driven him out of her sight. At the door he had paused, and looked at her with a strange mingling of manhood and submission in his eyes.