"They are the only two the clematis
had. If it had ten thousand they would have been for you."
Deleah kept her eyes upon the flowers. She felt that she could not touch
them. "You are very kind," she said.
"You would say as much as that to any stranger in the street who had
kicked a stone out of your path, and I--I--." He was stammering curiously
in his thickened voice. It seemed that the words he wanted to speak would
not come. "And I--after all that I suffer--only kind?" he got out at last.
With something of the expression of a trapped creature in her eyes, Deleah
looked past him to the door. He turned instantly, and shut it, and came
back to his place opposite her at the table.
"Your sister is married to Mr. Boult, to-day," he said. "At one time you
could not marry me because of your sister. That impediment's gone. Another
time, you had some other excuse. Again another. Come, what excuse have you
to-day?" He leant across the table to bring his face closer to hers. "You
don't intend to marry me, do you?"
She gazed at him with fear in her eyes, but did not speak. "You let me
live beside you, set my heart on you, till there was nothing else on earth
or heaven for me but you. You let me slave to serve a man I hated as a
means of getting you.
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