Page:The Yellow Book - 02.djvu/290

254 Broomhurst set his teeth, and the lines round his mouth deepened. He threw himself down beside her on the heather.

"Dear," he urged still gently, though his voice shoed he was controlling himself with an effort. "You are morbid about this. You have been alone too much—you are ill. Let me take care of you: I can, Kathleen—and I love you. Nothing but morbid fancy makes you imagine you are in any way respon­sible for—Drayton's death. You can't bring him back to life, and"

"No," she sighed drearily, "and if I could, nothing would be altered. Though I am mad with self-reproach, I feel that—it was all so inevitable. If he were alive and well before me this instant my feeling towards him wouldn't have changed. If he spoke to me, he would say 'My dear'—and I should loathe him. Oh, I know! It is that that makes it so awful."

"But if you acknowledge it," Broomhurst struck in eagerly, "will you wreck both of our lives for the sake of vain regrets? Kathleen, you never will."

He waited breathlessly for her answer.

"I won't wreck both our lives by marrying again without love on my side," she replied firmly.

"I will take the risk," he said. "You have loved me—you will love me again. You are crushed and dazed now with brood­ing over this—this trouble, but"

"But I will not allow you to take the risk," Kathleen answered. "What sort of woman should I be: to be willing again to live with a man I don't love? I have come to know that there are things one owes to oneself. Self-respect is one of them. I don't know how it has come to be so, but all my old feeling for you has gone. It is as though it had burnt itself out. I will not offer grey ashes to any man." Rh