She
leaned instead towards the fire. Her shoulders were bent. She looked
crushed, as if her vitality were gone, and yet so slender, so young, in
her thin wrap. He clinched his hands with a sharp intake of the breath,
and his frown deepened.
"So you won't speak to me?" he said. "It's beyond words, is it? It's to
be an insurmountable obstacle to happiness for the rest of our lives? We
go back to the old damnable existence we've led for so long! Or
perhaps--" his voice hardened--"perhaps you think we should be better
apart? Perhaps you would prefer to leave me?"
She flinched at that--flinched as if he had struck her--and then
suddenly she lifted her white face to his, showing him such an anguish of
suffering as he had not suspected.
"Oh, Edward," she said, "why did this have to happen? We were so
happy before."
That pierced him--the utter desolation of her--the pain that was too deep
for reproach. He bent to her, all the bitterness gone from his face.
"My dear," he said in a voice that shook, "can't you see how I loathe
myself--for hurting you--like this?"
And then suddenly--so suddenly that neither knew exactly how it
happened--they were linked together.
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