He raised the gloved fingers to his lips.  Monica bent her face away, deadly pale, with closed eyes.

‘Are we to part to-day, and never again see each other?’ he went on.  ‘Say that you love me!  Only say that you love me!’

‘You despise me for coming to you like this.’

‘Despise you?’

In a sudden rapture he folded his arms about her.

‘Say that you love me!’

He kissed away the last syllable of her whispered reply.

‘Monica!—­what is there before us?  How can I leave you?’

Yielding herself for the moment in a faintness that threatened to subdue her, she was yet able, when his caresses grew wild with passion, to put back his arms and move suddenly away.  He sprang up, and they stood speechless.  Again he drew near.

‘Take me away with you!’ Monica then cried, clasping her hands together.  ‘I can’t live with him.  Let me go with you to France.’

Bevis’s blue eyes widened with consternation.

‘Dare you—­dare you do that?’ he stammered.

’Dare I?  What courage is needed?  How dare I remain with a man I hate?’

‘You must leave him.  Of course you must leave him.’

‘Oh, before another day has passed!’ sobbed Monica.  ’It is wrong even to go back to-day.  I love you, and in that there is nothing to be ashamed of; but what bitter shame to be living with him, practising hypocrisy.  He makes me hate myself as much as I hate him.’

‘Has he behaved brutally to you, dearest?’

’I have nothing to accuse him of, except that he persuaded me to marry him—­made me think that I could love him when I didn’t know what love meant.  And now he wishes to get me away from all the people I know because he is jealous of every one.  And how can I blame him?  Hasn’t he cause for jealousy?  I am deceiving him—­I have deceived him for a long time, pretending to be a faithful wife when I have often wished that he might die and release me.  It is I who am to blame.  I ought to have left him.  Every woman who thinks of her husband as I do ought to go away from him.  It is base and wicked to stay there—­pretending—­deceiving—­’

Bevis came towards her and took her in his arms.

‘You love me?’ she panted under his hot kisses.  ’You will take me away with you?’

’Yes, you shall come.  We mustn’t travel together, but you shall come—­when I am settled there—­’

‘Why can’t I go with you?’

’My own darling, think what it would mean if our secret were discovered—­’

’Discovered?  But how can we think of that?  How can I go back there, with your kisses on my lips?  Oh, I must live somewhere in secret until you go, and then—­I have put aside the few things that I want to take.  I could never have continued to live with him even if you hadn’t said you love me.  I was obliged to pretend that I agreed to everything, but I will beg and starve rather than bear that misery any longer.  Don’t you love me enough to face whatever may happen?’