“If you have any pity, forgive me,”—it ran. “That I told you of my fault is proof of my earnest desire to begin a new life as regards you. I would give years of my life to win a kind word from you. All that was best and straightest in me spoke to you, Kitty. I am intensely miserable.”
She crumpled up the note and threw it aside. His misery indeed!
She looked at the clock. Half-past eleven. The thought came to her that all her life was to drag along at this pace, endless minutes to each hour.
The heat of her resentment against Hockmaster cooled down, but the poignancy of her shame remained. The impulsive hope that had risen at the first sight of the letter left a train of new reflections. How could she ever meet Raine again?
She rose once more, and resumed her weary, restless movements about the room.
“Never, never!” she cried. “His eyes would kill me—he would be kind—Oh God! I couldn't bear it. I would rather have him curse me! I would rather have him strike me! Oh, Raine, Raine, my darling, my love! I would have told you all—and you would have judged me from my own lips. You would not have put me from you. But this degradation—”
She was carrying death in her heart. She could not conceive the survival of his love. Men—unlike women—could not love, when once love had been turned to scorn. If they met, he would be considerate, kind, even pitiful. The thought of his contemptuous pity scorched her. The picture of him rose before her, frank, generous, honourable. She stopped short, as an agitating possibility occurred to her.
Might not quixotism lead him to renew his offer?
The idea haunted her, and gathering strength from her knowledge and her idealized conception of his nature, grew into a conviction. For a moment she gave herself up to the temptation of taking him at his word. She loved him with every yearning fibre in her body. Without him life was an appalling waste. It would be enough for her merely to be with him, seek now and then a caress from his hand.
But then came the passionate recoil. She shuddered, put up her hands before her face.