She turned her head away, but not before I had seen them.
"Dearest, would you rather I released you from your promise to me?"
I said, bending nearer over her. "Do you wish that?"
One single, violent sob shook the lovely breast beneath me and
swelled the throat.
"No," she said, passionately; "you know I don't!"
"There is no alternative between that or our marriage," I said,
quietly.
I was not trying to be inflexible, nor to harden my heart against
her. It was hardened by passion, which at no time is an inspirer of
tenderness, and mine had been sufficiently irritated through four
months of alternate excitation and resistance to be determined now.
My difficulty was not to avoid being too tender, but to check myself
from being too harsh. Had I heard my own words in cool blood they
might have seemed hard, and my insistence inconsiderate and
blamable, but my calm was only artificial, and my judgment little
else than a blind clinging to the object with which I had come.
"Why can't you go away for a time and then we can marry later, when
you come back?" she answered, in a weak, evasive tone.
"It is not wholly a question of being away from you," I returned.
"So long as I am engaged to you, Lucia, my whole life is totally
different from that which it would be if I were not."
"I give you permission to lead any life you please," she said
vehemently.
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