"
She gave a fleeting glance into my face, and then suddenly burst
into a passion of convulsive sobs and tears--sobs that seemed to
tear her breast asunder, and tears that started in a blinding
torrent, drenching her eyelids and eyelashes and pale cheeks.
"It is most unkind, it is horrible, it is cruel of you to press me
in this way!" she sobbed, trying with both hot, trembling hands to
push my arm away and to free herself from my clasp.
The sight of her tears hurt me, the pain stamped on the soft face,
and the tumultuous rising and falling of her breast in those
agonised sobs, reproached me, but the hurt and the reproach were
dull. If she thought her tears would induce me to hesitate or to
desist, she was wrong. They were to me simply a favourable sign of
her weakness, and urged me to press my advantage. I felt
instinctively that it would not do to fail now; having gone so far,
I must go farther, and be successful. Probably I should be much
sooner forgiven by Lucia herself. Nothing is less pardonable, either
in love or war, than an unsuccessful attempt.
Her resistance was nothing but nervous folly and weakness, and I
believed she herself would be glad to be forced to give it up.
Besides, even if my reason had not told me all this, my own feelings
would have been enough to make me relentless.
"You may cry," I thought, looking at her as she sobbed with her head
strained away from me, "but before I go you shall speak.
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