Bevis scarcely listened to her words.  The temptation of the natural man, basely selfish, was strengthening its hold upon him.

‘Do you love me?  Do you really love me?’ he replied to her, with thick, agitated utterance.

‘Why should you ask that?  How can you doubt it?’

‘If you really love me—–­’

His face and tones frightened her.

’Don’t make me doubt your love!  If I have not perfect trust in you what will become of me?’

Yet once more she drew resolutely away from him.  He pursued, and held her arms with violence.

‘Oh, I am mistaken in you!’ Monica cried in fear and bitterness.  ’You don’t know what love means, as I feel it.  You won’t speak, you won’t think, of our future life together—­’

‘I have promised—­’

’Leave loose of me!  It’s because I have come here.  You think me a worthless woman, without sense of honour, with no self-respect—­’

He protested vehemently.  The anguished look in her eyes had its effect upon his senses; by degrees it subjugated him, and made him ashamed of his ignoble impulse.

‘Shall I find a lodging for you till Tuesday?’ he asked, after moving away arid returning.

‘Will you?’

’You are sure you can leave home to-morrow—­without being suspected?’

’Yes, I am sure I can.  He is going to the City in the morning.  Appoint some place where I can meet you.  I will come in a cab, and then you can take me on to the—­’

’But you are forgetting the risks.  If you take a cab from Herne Hill, with your luggage, he will be able to find out the driver afterwards, and learn where you went.’

’Then I will drive only as far as the station, and come to Victoria, and you shall meet me there.’

The necessity of these paltry arrangements filled her soul with shame.  On the details of her escape she had hardly reflected.  All such considerations were, she deemed, naturally the care of her lover, who would act with promptitude, and so as to spare her a moment’s perplexity.  She had imagined everything in readiness within a few hours; on her no responsibility save that of breaking the hated bond.  Inevitably she turned to the wretched thought that Bevis regarded her as a burden.  Yes, he had already his mother and his sisters to support; she ought to have remembered that.

‘What time would it be?’ he was asking.

Unable to reply, she pursued her reflections.  She had money, but how to obtain possession of it?  Afterwards, when her flight was accomplished, secrecy, it appeared, would be no less needful than now.  That necessity had never occurred to her; declaration of the love that had freed her seemed inevitable—­nay, desirable.  Her self-respect demanded it; only thus could she justify herself before his sisters and other people who knew her. They, perhaps, would not see it in the light of justification, but that mattered little; her own conscience would approve what she had done.  But to steal away, and live henceforth in hiding, like a woman dishonoured even in her own eyes—­from that she shrank with repugnance.  Rather than that, would it not be preferable to break with her husband, and openly live apart from him, alone?