Page:The Other House (London, William Heinemann, 1896), Volume 2.djvu/211

Rh "I would have done anything for you!" Paul as if all talk with her were vain, wailed under his breath.

She considered this; her dreadful face was lighted by the response it kindled. "Would you do anything now?" He answered nothing; he seemed lost in the vision of what was carrying her through. "I saw it as I saw it," she continued: "there it was and there it is. There it is—there it is," she repeated in a tone sharp, for a flash, with all the excitement she contrived to keep under. "It has nothing to do now with any part or any other possibility even of what may be worst in me. It's a storm that's past, it's a debt that's paid. I may literally be better." At the expression this brought out in him she interrupted herself. "You don't understand a word I utter!"

He was following her—as she showed she could see—only in the light of his own emotion; not in that of any feeling that she herself could present. "Why didn't you speak to me—why didn't you tell me what you were thinking? There was nothing you couldn't have told me, nothing that wouldn't have brought me nearer. If I had known your abasement"