Page:The Other House (London, William Heinemann, 1896), Volume 2.djvu/158

144 carried by assault, and he had the effect both of keeping far from her and of revolving blindly round her. At last, in his hesitation, he pulled up before her. "What makes, all of a sudden, the tremendous need you speak of? Didn't you remind me but an hour ago of how remarkably low, at our last meeting, it had dropped?"

Rose's eyes, in the dimness, widened with their wonder. "You can speak to me in harshness of what I did an hour ago? You can taunt me with an act of penance that might have moved you—that did move you? Does it mean," she continued, "that you've none the less embraced the alternative that seems to you most worthy of your courage? Did I only stoop, in my deep contrition, to make it easier for you to knock me down? I gave you your chance to refuse me, and what you've come back for then will have been only, most handsomely, to take it. In that case you did injustice there to the question of your revenge. What fault have you to find with anything so splendid?"

Dennis had listened with his eyes averted, and he met her own again as if he had not heard, only bringing out his previous words with a harder