Sabine was trembling; her whole fabric of peace and happiness in the future seemed to be falling to pieces like a pack of cards.
She could only look at Michael with piteous violet eyes out of which all the defiance had gone. Her slender figure swayed a little, and she leaned against the mantelpiece.
"My God!" he said, with a fresh clenching of his strong hands, "I would not have believed I could have suffered so. As it is the last time we shall ever talk to one another perhaps--I want you to know about things--to hear it all. I would like to ask you again to forgive me for long ago, but I suppose you feel that is past forgiveness?" His face had a look of pleading; then he went on as she did not respond. "If you had not left me, I would soon have made you forget that you had been angry, as I thought indeed I had already done when you seemed to be contented at least in my arms. But I would have caressed you into complete forgetfulness in time--" here his voice vibrated with a deep note of tenderness, which thrilled her--but yet she could not speak.
"And what had begun just in mad passion would have grown into real love between us--for we were made for one another Sabine--did you never think of that?--just the same sort of natures--vigorous and all alive and passionate, with the same joy of life in our blood. We would have been supremely happy. But I was so frightfully arrogant in those days, and when I spoke I was deadly ashamed of myself, and then furious with you for daring to defy me and going after all. No one had ever disobeyed me. But it was shame really which made me agree to join Latimer Berkeley's expedition at once--the letter came by the early post. I wanted to get right away and try to forget what I had done--and since you had expressed your will, I just left you to stand by it." He leaned upon the mantelpiece now and buried his face in his hands.
"Oh, how wrong I was! Because you were so young I should have known that you could not judge--and perhaps acted hastily in that sort of reaction which always comes to one after passion--and I should have followed you and brought you back."
His tones shook with anguish now. "Well, I am punished--and so all that is left for us to do is to say good-bye, my dear, and let us each go our ways. You, at least, are not suffering as I am--because you do not care."