...
"Shall we go?" murmured Scott.
She looked at him vaguely for a second, feeling stunned and blinded by
the radiance of that revelation. A black veil seemed to be descending
upon her; she put out a groping hand.
He took it, and his hold was sustaining. He led her in silence down the
long, shadowy building to the porch.
He would have led her further, but a sudden, heavy shower was falling,
and he had to pause. She sank down trembling upon the stone seat.
"Scott! Oh, Scott!" she said. "Help me!"
He made a slight, involuntary movement that passed unexplained. "I am
here to help you, my dear," he said, his voice very quiet and even. "You
mustn't be scared, you know. You'll get through it all right."
She wrung her hands together in her extremity. "It isn't that,"
she told him. "I--I suppose I've got to go through it--as you say so.
But--but--you'll think me very wicked, yet I must tell you--I've made--a
dreadful mistake. I'm marrying for money, for position, to get away from
home,--anything but love. I don't love him. I know now that I never
shall--never can! And I'd give anything--anything--anything to escape!"
It was spoken. All the long-pent misgivings that had culminated in awful
certainty the night before had so wrought in her that now--now that the
revelation had come--she could no longer keep silence. But of that
revelation she would sooner have died than speak.
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