“God knows I do,” she replied pitifully.
“And you would have gone on living with me—I not being your husband?”
“But you are my husband,” cried Yvonne, “nothing could ever alter that.”
“But good God! it does alter it,” cried the Canon in a voice of anguish, breaking the iron bonds he had placed on his passion. “Neither in the eyes of God nor of man are you my wife. You have no right to bear my name. After this hour I have no right to enter this room. Every caress I gave you would be sin. Don’t you understand it, child? Don’t you understand that this has brought ruin into our lives, the horror of loneliness and separation?”
“Separation?” said Yvonne.
She rose slowly from her seat on the bed and stared at him aghast.
The twilight in the room deepened; the shadow of a wall opposite the window fell darker. Their faces and Yvonne’s bare neck and arms gleamed white in the gloom. They had spoken with many silences; for how long neither knew.
“Yes,” replied the Canon in his harder tones, recovering himself “It means all that.”
“I am to go—not to live with you any more?”
“Could you imagine our past relations could continue?”