“Why imperative?”
“I must suffer alone,” she responded gloomily, shaking her head. Her countenance was as pale as her gown, and she shivered as though she were cold, although the noonday heat was suffocating.
“Because you refuse to tell me anything or allow me to assist you?” I said. “This is not in accordance with the promise made and sealed by your lips on that evening long ago.”
“Nor have your actions been in accordance with your own promise,” she said slowly and distinctly.
“To what do you refer?”
“You told me that you loved me, Gerald,” she said in a deep voice, suddenly grown calm. “You swore by all you held most sacred that I was all the world to you, and that no one should come between us. Yet past events have shown that you have forgotten those words of yours on the day when we idled in the Bois beneath the trees. You, too, remember that day, do you not—the day when our lips met for the first time, and we both believed our path would in future be strewn with flowers? Ah!” she sighed, “and what an awakening life has been to me since then!”
“We parted because of your refusal to satisfy me as to the real state of your feelings towards the man who was my enemy,” I said rather warmly.
“But was it justifiable?” she asked in a tone of deep reproach and mingled sweetness. Her blue eyes looked full upon me—those eyes that had held me in such fascination in the golden days of youth. “Has any single fact which you have since discovered verified your suspicions? Tell me truthfully;” and she leaned towards me in an attitude of deepest earnestness.
“No,” I answered honestly, “I cannot say that my suspicions have ever been verified.”
“And because of that you have returned to me when it is too late.”