She gave a low cry and burst suddenly into a passion of weeping, turning her face from him.  But when in pale sudden shame he tried to excuse himself—­to appease her—­she moved away, with a gesture that overawed him.

“You have not confessed yourself”—­she said, and his look wavered under the significance of hers—­“but you drive me to it.  Yes, I repent!”—­her breast heaved, she caught her breath.  “I have been trying to cheat myself these last few weeks—­to run away from grief—­and the other night when you asked me—­I would have given all I have and am to feel like any happy girl, who says ‘Yes’ to her lover.  I tried to feel so.  But even then, though I was miserable and reckless, I knew in my heart—­it was impossible!  If you suppose—­if you like to suppose—­that I—­I have hopes or plans—­as mean as they would be silly—­you must—­of course.  But I have given no one any right to think so or say so.  Mr. Wharton—­”

Gathering all her self-control, she put out her white hand to him.  “Please—­please say good-bye to me.  It has been hideous vanity—­and mistake—­and wretchedness—­our knowing each other—­from the beginning.  I am grateful for all you did, I shall always be grateful.  I hope—­oh!  I hope—­that—­that you will find a way through this trouble.  I don’t want to make it worse by a word.  If I could do anything!  But I can’t.  You must please go.  It is late.  I wish to call my friend, Mrs. Hurd.”

Their eyes met—­hers full of a certain stern yet quivering power, his strained and bloodshot, in his lined young face.

Then, with a violent gesture—­as though he swept her out of his path—­he caught up his hat, went to the door, and was gone.

She fell on her chair almost fainting, and sat there for long in the summer dark, covering her face.  But it was not his voice that haunted her ears.

“You have done me wrong—­I pray God you may not do yourself a greater wrong in the future!”

Again and again, amid the whirl of memory, she pressed the sad remembered words upon the inward wound and fever—­tasting, cherishing the smart of them.  And as her trance of exhaustion and despair gradually left her, it was as though she crept close to some dim beloved form in whom her heart knew henceforward the secret and sole companion of its inmost life.

BOOK IV.

“You and I—­
Why care by what meanders we are here
I’ the centre of the labyrinth?  Men have died
Trying to find this place which we have found.”

CHAPTER I.

Ah! how purely, cleanly beautiful was the autumn sunrise!  After her long hardening to the stale noisomeness of London streets, the taint of London air, Marcella hung out of her window at Mellor in a thirsty delight, drinking in the scent of dew and earth and trees, watching the ways of the birds, pouring forth a soul of yearning and of memory into the pearly silence of the morning.