What had she said?  What had happened?  How was it that the words that yesterday she would have been ashamed to so much as whisper to herself had now rushed to her lips almost of their own accord?  After all those years of repression, suddenly the sweet, dim thought she had hidden in her secretest heart’s heart had leaped to light and to articulate words.  Unasked, unbidden, she had told him that she loved him.  She, she had done this thing when, but a few moments before, her anger against him had shaken her to her very finger-tips.  The hot, intolerable shame of it smote like fire into her face.  Her world was cracking about her ears; everything she had prized the dearest was being torn from her, everything she had fancied the strongest was being overthrown.  Had she, she who had held herself so proud and high, come at last to this?

Swiftly she turned from him and clasped her hands before her eyes and sank down into the chair she had quitted, bowing her head upon her arms, hiding her face, shutting herself from the light of day, quivering and thrilling with an agony of shame and with an utter, an abject self-contempt that was beyond all power of expression.  But the instant she felt Bennett’s touch upon her shoulder she sprang up as if a knife had pierced her, and shrank from him, turning her head away, her hand, palm outward, before her eyes.

“Oh, please!” she begged piteously, almost inarticulately in the stress of her emotion, “don’t—­if you are a man—­don’t take advantage—­please, please don’t touch me.  Let me go away.”

She was talking to deaf ears.  In two steps Bennett had reached her side and had taken her in his arms.  Lloyd could not resist.  Her vigour of body as well as of mind was crushed and broken and beaten down; and why was it that in spite of her shame, that in spite of her unutterable self-reproach, the very touch of her cheek upon his shoulder was a comfort?  Why was it that to feel herself carried away in the rush of this harsh, impetuous, masculine power was a happiness?  Why was it that to know that her prided fortitude and hitherto unshaken power were being overwhelmed and broken with a brutal, ruthless strength was an exultation and a glory?  Why was it that she who but a moment before quailed from his lightest touch now put her arms about his neck and clung to him with a sense of protection and of refuge, the need of which she had always and until that very moment disdained?

“Why should you be sorry because you spoke?” said Bennett.  “I knew that you loved me and you knew that I loved you.  What does it matter if you said it or did not say it?  We know each other, you and I. We understand.  You knew that I loved you.  You think that I have been strong and determined, and have done the things I set out to do; what I am is what you made me.  What I have done I have done because I thought you would approve.  Do you think I would have come back if I had not known that I was coming back to you?” Suddenly an impatient exclamation escaped him, and his clasp about her tightened.  “Oh! words—­the mere things that one can say, seem so pitiful, so miserably inadequate.  Don’t you know, can’t you feel what you are to me?  Tell me, do you think I love you?”