"I shall never marry you."
He laughed.
She turned upon him. "You laugh--you have no idea what it is to me! I
think of you day and night, I have longed to have you in my arms--on my
heart. No, don't touch me; it is only that I won't have you believe that
I don't know what love is, that I don't love you. Why, once at Port aux
Pins, I walked miles at night because I was so mad with jealousy; and I
found you playing whist! If I could only have known beforehand--if I
could only have seen you once, just once, Ferdie might have done what he
chose with Cicely; I shouldn't have stirred!"
"Yes, you would," said Paul.
"No, I shouldn't have stirred; you might as well know me as I am. What I
despise myself for now is, that I haven't the force to make an end of
it, to relieve you of the thought of me--at least as some one living.
But as long as you are alive, Paul--" She looked at him with her eyes
full of tears.
"You don't know what you are talking about," said Paul, sternly. "You
will live, and as my wife; we will be married here at Romney to-morrow."
"Would you really marry me _here_?" said Eve, the light of joy coming
into her wan face.
"It's a tumble-down old place, I know. But won't it do to be married
in?"
"Oh, it is so much harder when you seem to forget,--when for the moment
you really do forget! But of course I know that it could not last."
"What could not last?"
She moved away a step or two. "If I should marry you, you would hate me.
Not in the beginning. But it would come. For Ferdie was your brother,
and I _did_ kill him; nothing can alter these facts--not even love. At
first you wouldn't remember; then, gradually, he would come back to you;
you would think of the time when you were boys together, and you would
be sorry. Then, gradually, you would realize that _I_ killed him;
whenever I came near you, you would see--" Her voice broke, but she
hurried on. "You said I was brave to do it, and I was. You said it was
heroic, and it was. Yet all the same, he _was_ your brother; and _I_
killed him. In defence of Cicely and the baby? Nothing makes any
difference. I killed him, and you would end by hating me. Yet I
shouldn't be able to leave you; once your wife, I know that I should
stay on, even if it were only to fold your clothes,--to touch them; to
pick up the burnt match-ends you had dropped, and your newspapers; to
arrange the chairs as you like to have them. I should be weak, weak--I
should follow you about. How you would loathe me! It would become to you
a hell."
"I'll take care of that," said Paul; "I'll see to my own hells; at
present I'm thinking of something very different. We will be married
to-day, and not wait for to-morrow; I will take you away to-night."