"This telegram," he said, at last, trying to control his voice, "is from Reckage. He is on his way now to see me."
"He is coming here? Why is he coming here?"
He put his arm round her, in a desperate, long embrace, kissing her face, her eyes, her hair.
"What is it, Robert?" she said, clinging to him, for she heard something like a sob under his breath. "You have had bad news. You must tell me."
"It may not be so serious ... perhaps it is badly worded ... but Pensée is coming with him and he says quite plainly that there is some legal difficulty about our marriage."
"Some legal difficulty!" she repeated. "What is the use of that now? I can't leave you again. I'll die first. I can't bear it. O, Robert, I am so tired of the law. There are no laws for the birds, or for the flowers, or for the trees, or for any thing that is happy! Why should we be made so miserable--just to please the magistrates and mayors!"
"But it is more than that--I am certain. Suppose it has something to do with Parflete?"
"With Wrexham? How could that be? He is dead."
"Reckage doesn't say so. But would he and Pensée come unless they felt we should need them?"
"I need no one except you. I don't want to see them. I don't want to hear their news. They are killing you. You seem calm, but your face! you have never looked like this before. O, darling, it can't be what you think it is."
He lifted her from the ground and took her in his arms again, as though he could defy the cruel, invisible fate which had decreed their separation.
"In any case," he said, "I won't give you back--I cannot. It is too much to ask. You are mine--you were never his--never. God is not unjust, and this is unjust. As for other people and outside opinion, they have not mattered to me at any time, and least of all can they matter now. I won't give you back."
She held him closer, already feeling, in spite of his words, the first agony of their inevitable farewell.
"You love me!" she said, "you must never leave me. Kiss me, and promise me that you will never leave me."
Grief and horror had broken down every barrier of reserve between them. The pent-up passion on his side, the intense unconscious tenderness on hers seemed to meet and blend in the one consuming thought that they belonged to each other--that, in the awful struggle between the force of circumstances and the force of life--they might have to part.