"So that is the way you pave the way to penitence? You atone to the broken toys by walking over them? No, Camelia, no, nothing atones, either to him or to me, for that unspoken lie." He came back to her, feeling the need to face her for the solemn moment of the contest.
Camelia was speaking hurriedly at last, losing a little her sustaining calm--"And had I told you?--Had I said at once that I was engaged to him?--Would that have helped us?--Could you have said, then, that you loved me? You would have been too angry--for his sake--to say it, when I had told you that in one day I had accepted and meant to reject him"--the questions came eagerly.
He looked at her face, strong with its still unshaken certainty, white, delicate, insistent. Loving it and her, his eyes held hers intently, and he asked, "Did I say I loved you?"
A serene dignity rose to meet his look. "You did not _say_ it, perhaps. You said you did _not_ love me," she added, with a little smile.
"I was base--and I spoke basely. I said that I loved you enough to kiss you. You may scorn me for it."
"Ah!" she said quickly, "that was because you did not believe that I loved you! You are exonerated."
"Not even then. But if you do love me--choose me, as you say; if I do love you--which I have not said--and will not say, will not say even to exculpate my folly of last night--even then, Camelia! I would not marry a woman whom I despise."
"Despise?" she repeated. Her voice was a toneless echo of his. She weighed the word, and found it heavy, as he saw. Her eyes dwelt on his mutely, and there dawned slowly in them the terror of the eternal negative that rose between her and him.
"You are not good enough for me, Camelia," said Perior.
"Because of yesterday!" she gasped. "You can't forgive that!"
"Not only that, Camelia--I do not love you."
She stood silent, gazing. His heart bled for her. To tell the saving lie, he had faced a jibing self-scorn; yet he continued to face it inflexibly.
"I could not live with you. I think you would kill me. I said to poor Arthur this afternoon what I believe of you--that you are selfish, and false, and hard as a stone. I could not love a woman of whom I could think--of whom I had been forced to say--that."