At
any little sound she stopped and stood listening--save for her hair and
eyes, as white from head to foot as a double narcissus flower in the
dusk, bending towards some faint tune played to it somewhere oft in the
fields. But all those little sounds ceased, one after another--they
had meant nothing; and each time, her spirit returning--within the pale
walls of the room, began once more to inhabit her lingering fingers.
During that hour in her bedroom she lived through years. It was dark
when she left it.
CHAPTER XVI
When Miltoun at last came it was past nine o'clock.
Silent, but quivering all over; she clung to him in the hall; and this
passion of emotion, without sound to give it substance, affected him
profoundly. How terribly sensitive and tender she was! She seemed to
have no armour. But though so stirred by her emotion, he was none the
less exasperated. She incarnated at that moment the life to which he
must now resign himself--a life of unending tenderness, consideration,
and passivity.
For a long time he could not bring himself to speak of his decision.
Every look of her eyes, every movement of her body, seemed pleading with
him to keep silence. But in Miltoun's character there was an element
of rigidity, which never suffered him to diverge from an objective once
determined.
When he had finished telling her, she only said:
"Why can't we go on in secret?"
And he felt with a sort of horror that he must begin his struggle over
again.
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