“I’ll never believe that. I’ve made you think so with my damned temper. Together we—could make it a success. Ah, Elizabeth, we could! Forget what I said, and let’s start afresh! Elizabeth, you must! I can’t possibly let you go like this! You don’t understand!”

“Oh, don’t, don’t! Don’t make me! Please don’t make me!”

Words, arguments rained about her. She listened, quivering, to Stephen’s pleading, his reasoning, even his anger. At last, looking drearily up at him, she said,

“If—if you make me come back now—I think I shall die. Leave me—just for a little while!”

That was cheating. Gaining time—putting him off with false hopes. She would never go back, only she could not tell him so. He would find out in time.

Her words gave him pause. In silence he paced the room, thinking, thinking. He could see that Elizabeth was beside herself; he could see too that for the moment at least she was in deadly fear of him, fear and repulsion. All his thoughts were concentrated on the determination to save this marriage of theirs from the rocks. The look of weakening despair on Elizabeth’s face cut him to the quick, but he realised that she was in earnest. He could not believe that she would always be so. He would not believe that. The other day he had driven her to desperate, incontinent flight by anger, and by precipitate action. He must be careful now; he would do nothing to drive her further from him. In anger he had uttered threats which he would never have carried out. It was not in his nature to coerce the thing he loved most. He would never have done so, only she did not know that and he could not convince her. In her present mood she was capable of any madness; he would not drive her to it. He clung to the hope that time would soften her, and make her wiser. Just now it would be cruel to force her against her will. Cruel and perhaps disastrous. She would come back to him if he insisted; he knew that. But the spiritual part of her would go farther and farther away. That might never come back. How easily could he ruin everything now!

She was frightened, watching him with great, apprehensive eyes. Pity for her helplessness and her fear took possession of him. After all, she was hardly more than a child. She must be comforted, re-assured.

He went to her, and sat down beside her, taking her hand. The hardness had gone from his face, and when he spoke his voice was quiet, free from that disturbing passion.

“All right, Elizabeth. Don’t look so scared. Listen to me, dear.”

Her hand lay passive in his; her eyes did not waver from his face.