In that half-hour during which they had sat together in the crimson sundown, her manner seemed to have changed. She had acknowledged her love for him, yet in the same breath she had indicated a gulf between them. He saw in her demeanour a timidity that was quite unusual, and he put it down to guiltiness of her secret.
“Marion,” he said at last, taking her hand firmly in his again, and speaking in earnest, “you said just now that you believed I loved you, but—something. But what? Tell me. What is it you wish to say? Come, do not deny the truth. Remember what we are both to each other. I have no secrets from you—and you have none from me!”
She cast her eyes wildly about her, and then they rested upon his. A slight shudder ran through her as he still held her soft, little hand.
“I know—I know it is very wrong of me,” she faltered, casting her eyes to the floor, as though in shame. “I have no right to hold anything back from you, Max, because—because I love you—but—ah!—but you don’t understand—it is because I love you so much that I am silent—for fear that you—”
And she buried her head upon his shoulder and burst into tears.
Chapter Seventeen.
In which a Scot Becomes Anxious.
That same Sunday evening, at midnight, in a cane chair in the lounge of the Central Station Hotel, in Glasgow, Charlie Rolfe sat idly smoking a cigar.