It was so
hard--so hideously hard--to face him, this man who loved her so
overwhelmingly, and tell him that he had failed to win her love in
return. And at the eleventh hour--to treat him thus! If he had taken her
by the throat and wrung her neck, she would have considered him justified
and herself but righteously punished.
But he did nothing of a violent nature. He only sat there looking at her,
and though she could not bring herself to meet his look she knew that it
held no anger.
He did not speak, and she went on with a species of desperate pleading,
because silence was so intolerable. "It wouldn't be right of me to--to
marry you and not tell you, would it? It wouldn't be fair. It would be
like marrying you under false pretences. I only wish--oh, I do wish--that
I had known sooner, when you first asked me. I might have known. I ought
to have known! But--but--somehow--" she began to falter badly and finally
concluded in a piteous whisper--"I didn't."
"How did you find out?" he said. His tone was still perfectly quiet; but
he spoke judicially, as one who meant to have an answer.
But Dinah had no answer for him. It was the very question to which there
could be no reply. Her fingers interlaced and strained against each
other. She stood mute.
"I think you can tell me that," Eustace said.
She made a small but vehement gesture of negation. "I can't!" she said.
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