He flung round savagely. “There’s someone else in the field. I suspected it before. Who is it? That maniac at Tetherstones?”
She leaned forward a little further to the glow. “It doesn’t really matter,” she said. “Even if it were so, it wouldn’t really count, would it?”
Her weariness sounded again in her voice, but there was no weakness with it, rather a species of solitary majesty upon which he could not intrude. Yet, baffled, he still sought to penetrate her defences.
“You loved me once,” he repeated doggedly. “What did I ever do to forfeit your love?”
She turned suddenly as she sat, and faced him, pale, with burning eyes of accusation.
“I will tell you what you did. You desecrated my love. You killed it at birth. You treated me then—as you are treating me now—dishonourably. You gave me stones for bread, and you are doing it still. I think you are incapable of anything else. Love—real love—is out of your reach!”
The fire of her words scorched him; he drew back. “Gad!” he said. “If you’d lived in the old days, you’d have been burnt as a witch.”
“There are worse fates than that,” she answered very bitterly.
“There are!” he returned with a flash of anger. “And hotter hells! Well, you’ve made your conditions. I accept them. You are free to go.”
He flung the words with a force and suddenness that struck her like a blow. She sat for a few moments, staring at him. Then, with an effort, she rose.
He came close to her. His face was drawn. Somehow she felt as though she were looking at an animal through the iron bars of a cage.
He spoke, between his teeth. “Yes, I mean it. I will let you go—just to show you that—as you kindly remarked just now—I am not—all—beast. But—I hold you to your promise. Is that understood? You will marry me.”
She lifted her head with a certain pride. “I have said it,” she said, and turned from him.
He thrust out a hand and grasped her shoulder. “You will say it again!” he said.
She stopped. That grip of his sent panic to her heart, but she stilled it with a desperate sense of expediency. Yet, for the moment she could not speak, so terrible was the strain, and in that moment, as she stood summoning her strength, there came the sound of an electric bell cleaving the dreadful silence so suddenly that she cried out and almost fell.