“You intend to leave me without forgiveness,” she wailed. “Ah, you will not be so cruel, Geoffrey. Surely you can see how passionately I love you.”
“You do not, however, love me sufficiently well to risk all consequences of divulging your mysterious secret,” I retorted, with almost brutal indifference, turning slowly from her.
“Then kiss me, Geoffrey,” she cried wildly, springing towards me and again entwining her soft arms about my neck. “Kiss me once again—if for the last time.”
Our lips met for an instant, then slowly I disengaged myself and strode towards the door. In her refusal to throw light upon the incidents that had so long held me perplexed and bewildered, I fancied she was shielding someone. Although crushed and downcast, I had resolved to go forth into the world again with my terrible burden of sorrow concealed beneath a smiling countenance. I regretted deeply that I had sought her, now that I was aware of the gulf that lay between us.
“Stay, Geoffrey! Stay. I cannot bear that you should go,” she wailed.
Halting, I turned towards her, saying,—
“When I have learnt the truth, then only will I return. Till then, I can have no faith in you.”
“But you are my husband, Geoffrey. I love you.”
She tottered forward unevenly, as if to follow me, but ere I could save her she staggered and fell forward upon the carpet in a dead faint.
I rang the bell violently, then, with a final glance at the blanched features of the woman I so dearly loved, I passed out, struggling through the brilliant, laughing throng of guests in the great hall, and was soon alone in utter dejection beneath the trees in the long, gas-lit avenue.