Page:Roy Norton--The unknown Mr Kent.djvu/255

 and put my hand in yours, and walk with you in defeat! I was sick of illusion—of sham royalty—of polite lies! I wanted your esteem! Yours! all of it! And now, I despise myself for it!"

She stopped, choked by her own humiliation, and looked at him; but his eyes were on the floor, his hands hanging listlessly open, his heavy shoulders and stalwart frame inert, and passive, as if all she had confessed, and all her scorn, were not capable of moving him. For a long time she stood thus, quivering, while he stood dumbly before her. The chirping of birds in the sunlit gardens outside, the slow measured footsteps of the sentry in the corridor without, and that ominous, distant hum of Marken itself came to them accentuated in volume by their own silence. The echoes of her voice, like the appealing sobs of disillusionment coming from a hurt heart, died away like the last faint sounds of a requiem. Dumbly, like one astounded by some overwhelming surprise, he lifted his head and met her eyes. All the old bravery was gone from them. Gone, too, all the old mockery, the old readiness of response, the quick acceptation of overchanging chance. Something in their great seriousness, in their very depths, made her catch her breath. She saw that he was humbly, yet desperately, fighting to speak; that words were being sought and that none satisfied.

There was a clamorous, insolent note added to [251]