Peter raised his head and looked at her. His face was grey.
"God!" he muttered. "Where were we going?"
He stumbled to the chimneypiece, and, leaning his arms on it, buried his face against them.
At the sound of her voice he turned towards her, and the look in his eyes hurt her like a physical blow.
"Oh, my dear . . . my dear!" she cried, trembling towards him. "Don't look like that . . . Ah! don't look like that!"
And her hands went fluttering out in the mother-yearning that every woman feels for her man in trouble.
She hardly recognised the low, toneless voice.
Her eyes were shining. "Sorry for loving me?" she said.
"No--not for loving you. God knows, I can't help that! But because I would have taken you and made you mine . . . you who are not mine at all."
She came a few steps nearer to him, standing sweet and unafraid before him, her grave eyes shining with a kind of radiance.
"Dear," she went on simply, throwing out her hands in a little defenceless gesture, "if you want me, I'll come to you. . . . Not--not secretly . . . while I'm still pledged to Roger. But openly, before all the world. I'll go with you . . . if you'll take me."
She stood very still, waiting for his answer. Right or wrong, in that moment of utter sacrifice of self, she had risen to the best that was in her. She was willing to lay all on love's altar--body, soul, and spirit, and that honour of the Davenants which she had been so schooled to keep untarnished. Her pledge to Roger, her uncle's faith in her--all these must be tossed into the fire to make her gift complete. But the agony in Peter's face when the mask had fallen from it had temporarily destroyed for her all values except the value of love.
Peter took the fluttering, outstretched fingers and laid his lips against them. Then he relinquished them slowly, lingeringly. Passion had died out of his face. His eyes held only a grave tenderness, and the sternly sweet expression of his mouth recalled to Nan the man as she had first known him, before love, terrible and beautiful, had come into their lives to destroy them.
"I should never take you, dear," he said at last. "A man doesn't hurt the thing he loves--not in his right senses. What he'll do when the madness is on him--only his own soul knows."