“It’s too strong for us,” she said. “We can’t help it. I will face anything with you. We will go right away, Lyndhurst, and live, instead of being starved like this.”
She took both his hands in hers, completely carried away for the first time in her life by something outside herself. Treacherous and mean as was that course on which she was determined, she was, perhaps, a finer woman at this moment of supreme disloyalty than in all the years of her blameless married life.
“I’ve never loved before, Lyndhurst,” she said quietly, “nor have I ever known what it meant. Now I can’t consider anything else; it doesn’t matter what happens to Wilfred and Elsie. Nothing matters except you.”
This time it was not he who kissed her; it was she who pressed her mouth to his.
There was but little to settle, their plans were perfectly simple and ruthless. They would cross over to Boulogne that night, and, as soon as the law set them free, marry each other. A train to Folkestone left Riseborough in a little over an hour’s time, running in connection with the boat. They could easily catch it. But it was wiser not to go to the station together: they would meet there.
As he walked home through the gleaming October afternoon, Major Ames was conscious neither of struggle nor regret. The power which Millie had had over him all these months, so that it was she always who really took the lead, and urged him one step forward and then another, gripped him and led him on here to the last step of all. He still obeyed and followed that slender, fragile woman who so soon would be his; it was as necessary to do her bidding here as it had been to kiss her, when first, under the mulberry-tree, she had put up her face towards his. These last days seemed to have killed all sense of loyalty and manhood within him; he gave no thought at all to his wife, and thought of Harry only as Amy’s son. Besides, he was not responsible: man though he was, he was completely in the hands of this woman. All his life he had had no real principles to direct him, he had lived a decent life only because no temptation to live otherwise had ever really come near him, and even now it was in no way the wickedness of what he purposed that at all dragged him back; it was mere timidity at taking an irrevocable step.