Part 53 (1/2)

”What do you mean?” he said, his arms tightening about her.

She kept her face averted. ”I mean--that some forms of torture are worse than death. If it comes to that--if you compel me--I shall choose death.”

”Stella!” He let her go so suddenly that she nearly fell. The utterance of her name was as a cry wrung from him by sheer agony. He turned from her with his hands over his face. ”My G.o.d!” he said, and again almost inarticulately, ”My--G.o.d!”

The low utterance pierced her, yet she stood motionless, her hands gripped hard together. He had forced the words from her, and they were past recall. Nor would she have recalled them, had she been able, for it seemed to her that her love had become an evil thing, and her whole being shrank from it in a species of horrified abhorrence, even though she could not cast it out.

He had turned towards the window, and she watched him, her heart beating in slow, hard strokes with a sound like a distant drum. Would he go?

Would he remain? She almost prayed aloud that he would go.

But he did not. Very suddenly he turned and strode back to her. There was purpose in every line of him, but there was no longer any violence.

He halted before her. ”Stella,” he said, and his voice was perfectly steady and controlled, ”do you think you are being altogether fair to me?”

She wrung her clasped hands. She could not answer him.

He took them into his own very quietly. ”Just look me in the face for a minute!” he said.

She yearned to disobey, but she could not. Dumbly she raised her eyes to his.

He waited a moment, very still and composed. Then he spoke. ”Stella, I swear to you--and I call G.o.d to witness--that I did not kill Ralph Dacre.”

A dreadful s.h.i.+ver went through her at the bald brief words. She felt, as Tommy had felt a little earlier, physically sick. The beating of her heart was getting slower and slower. She wondered if presently it would stop.

”Do you believe me?” he said, still holding her eyes with his, still clasping her icy hands firmly between his own.

She forced herself to speak before that horrible sense of nausea overcame her. ”Perhaps--David--said the same thing--about Uriah the Hitt.i.te.”

His face changed a little, but it was a change she could not have defined. His eyes remained inscrutably fixed upon hers. They seemed to enchain her quivering soul.

”No,” he said quietly. ”Nor did I employ any one else to do it.”

”But you were there!” The words seemed suddenly to burst from her without her own volition.

He drew back sharply, as if he had been struck. But he kept his eyes upon hers. ”I can't explain anything,” he said. ”I am not here to explain. I only came to see if your love was great enough to make you believe in me--in spite of all there seems to be against me. Is it, Stella? Is it?”

His words seemed to go through her, tearing a way to her heart; the agony was more than she could bear. She uttered an anguished cry, and wrenched herself from him. ”It isn't a question of love!” she said. ”You know it isn't a question of love! I never wanted to love you. I never wholly trusted you. But you forced my love--though you couldn't compel my trust. And now that I know--now that I know--” her voice broke as if the torture were too great for her; she flung out her hands with a gesture of driving him from her--”oh, it is h.e.l.l on earth--h.e.l.l on earth!”

He drew back for a second before her, his face deathly white. And then suddenly an awful light leapt in his eyes. He gripped her outflung hands. The fire had kindled to a flame and the torture was too much for him also.

”Then you shall love me--even in h.e.l.l!” he said, through his clenched teeth, and locked her in the iron circle of his arms.

She did not resist him. She was very near the end of her strength. Only, as he held her, her eyes met his, mutely imploring him....

It reached him even in his madness, that unspoken appeal. It checked him in the mid-furnace of his pa.s.sion. His hold relaxed as if at a word of command. He put her into a chair and turned himself from her.

The next moment he was fumbling desperately at the window fastening. The night met him on the threshold. He heard her weeping, piteously, hopelessly, as he went away.