"In time?" she repeated. The certainty that she would have to be deprived of his presence for the greater part, at all events, of her life came over her with intolerable anguish, and with it she felt a presentiment of the future struggle to be waged against the profound instinct which drew them, with all the strength of a river's current, toward each other.
"No, no," she said, "if you send me away, I shall die. They frighten me; they tell me lies. My mother is dead; my father is dead. I have no one but you. You can't forsake me. You love me too much. I know you won't leave me."
Her innocence made the recklessness of her appeal the more compelling. The beseeching, intense affection of her soul transfigured her face with an almost unearthly sweetness. White, trembling, and despairing she laid her head upon his shoulder, holding him with both arms, and swaying from the agony of a grief without hope and without tears.
"You must try to understand," he said, "you must try. You are so young--such a child, but you do know that we can't live together, in the same house, if our marriage is not valid. That would compromise your honour. How else can I say what I must say?"
"I shouldn't mind. God would understand."
"But the world wouldn't understand. And one has to avoid the appearance of evil."
"They may say anything they please. I should be very proud if they misjudged me for your sake."
Then a thought suddenly pierced her. What would they say about his honour? Would the world misjudge him? Her weakness became strength under coercion of this new possibility; her cheeks burned at the light thrown upon her first selfish impulse.
"O, why have I said such things?" she said, tearing herself away from him, "and I used to think once that women like me were too bad to live. I used to wonder how they could be so evil. That was because I had never been tempted. And now I see how hard it is--how hard to fight. It is so easy to judge others when you are married to some one you love. But I begin to understand now--I ought to hide myself in a cell and pray till I die for women who are unhappy."
She pushed back the soft golden hair which had fallen a little over her face, brightening its sorrow. Every feature quivered under the invisible cutting hand of cruel experience. In those last sharp moments of introspection she had gained such a knowledge of suffering that a fire seemed to have consumed her vision of life, reducing it to a frightful desert of eternal woe and unavailing sacrifice. Partially stunned, and partially blinded by misery, she felt the awful helplessness and pain of what is sometimes called the second birth, a crisis in all human development when the first true realisation comes that the soul is a stranger, a rebel, strong as eternity, weak as the flesh, free as the illimitable air.