She ran hard and facing him blocked his way.
“But what of me? What of my feelings while I saw you hanging crucified?”
That point of view had not occurred to him. He looked at her embarrassed. His Scottish veracity asserted itself.
“When a man’s mad in love,” said he, “he can’t think of everything.”
She took his arm and led him up the gravelled path again.
“Don’t you see, dear, how impossible it all is?”
“Yes. I suppose so. It must be one thing or the other. And all that is good and true and honourable makes it the other.”
Tears came at the hopelessness of it. She seized his hand in both of hers.
“What you said just now is a thing no woman could forget to the day of her death.”
She kissed the hand and let it drop, stirred to the inmost. What was she, ineffectual failure, to command the love of such a man? He stood for a while looking into the vacancy of the pale blue sky over the ivy-clad wall. Before her eyes garden and house and wall and sky were blotted out; and only the one tall figure existed in the scene. Her heart beat. It was a moment of peril, and the moment seemed like an hour.