Page:The Yellow Book - 02.djvu/286

250 "Yes, I did."

"And You mean that you don't now?"

Her voice was very tired. "Yes—I can't help it," she answered, "it has gone—utterly."

The grey sea slowly lapped the rocks. Overhead the sharp scream of a gull cut through the stillness. It was broken again, a moment afterwards, by a short hard laugh from the man.

"Don't!" she whispered, and laid a hand swiftly on his arm. "Do you think it isn't worse for me? I wish to God I did love you," she cried passionately. "Perhaps it would make me forget that to all intents and purposes I am a murderess."

Broomhurst met her wide despairing eyes with an amazement which yielded to sudden pitying comprehension.

"So that is it, my darling? You are worrying about that? You who were as loyal, as"

She stopped him with a frantic gesture.

"Don't! don't!" she wailed. "If you only knew; let me try to tell you—will you?" she urged pitifully. "It may be better if I tell some one—if I don't keep it all to myself, and think, and think."

She clasped her hands tight, with the old gesture he remembered when she was struggling for self-control, and waited a moment.

Presently she began to speak in a low hurried tone: "It began before you came. I know now what the feeling was that I was afraid to acknowledge to myself. I used to try and smother it, I used to repeat things to myself all day—poems, stupid rhymes—anything to keep my thoughts quite underneath—but I—hated John before you came! We had been married nearly a year then. I never loved him. Of course you are going to say: Why did you marry him? She looked drearily over the placid sea. Rh