I dropped her hand and walked to and fro. It was useless
to ask if she had thought out her decision carefully. Her tone
disposed of that. I went back and stood before her.
"The question is yours to decide. Yet I should be a strange man if I
let you go without being sure I understood your motives. If you go
because you wish to be free from me,--that is all that need be said.
But if I have failed to woo you as a man should---- You sealed my
lips. Will you let me open them now?"
Perhaps my hand went out to her. At all events she drew away, and I
thought her look frightened, as if something urged her to me that she
must resist.
"No, no, you must not woo me, you must not. I beg you, monsieur."
I looked at her panic and shook my head.
"Why do you fear to love me, to yield to me? You are my wife."
"I told you. I told you the day--the last day that we were together in
the woods. It would be a tragedy if we loved, monsieur."
"But you are my wife."
She looked at me. The light from the window fell full in her great
eyes, and they were the eyes of the boy who had looked up at me in that
very room; the boy who had captured me, against my reason, by his
spirit and will, I felt the same challenge now.
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