and low. "I have a beautiful
home, my father's home, my mother's--your laws and vows are nothing to
them. You shall be honoured, loved--ah, dear! adored, worshipped--you do
not know what we will do for you, to fill your life with sweet things.
All your life, Maria, from to-morrow. Instead of pain and penance and
everlasting suffering and weariness, you shall have all that the world
holds of love and peace and flowers. And you shall sing your whole heart
out when you will, and have music to play with from year's beginning to
year's end and year's end again. Sweet, let me tell you how I love
you--how you are alive in every drop of my blood, beating through me
like living fire, through heart and soul and head and hand--"

With a quick movement she pressed her palms against her veil upon her
ears to shut out the sound of his words. She rocked herself a little, as
though the pain were almost greater than she could bear. But his hands
moved too, stealthily, strongly, as a tiger's velvet feet, with a
vibration all through them, to the very ends of his fingers. For he was
in earnest. And the arm went softly round her, and closed gently upon
her as her figure swayed in her chair; and the other sought hers, and
found it cold as ice and trembling, and not strong to stop her hearing.
And again she listened.

Wild and incoherent words fell from his lips, hot and low, with no
reason in them but the overwhelming reason of love itself. For he was
not an eloquent man, and now he took no thought of what he said. He was
far too natural to be eloquent, and far too deeply stirred to care for
the shape his love took in speech. There was in his words the strong
rush of out-bursting truth which even the worst passion has when it is
real to the roots. Words terrible and gentle, blasphemous and devout,
wove themselves into a new language such as Maria Addolorata had never
heard, nor dared to think of hearing. But he dared everything, to tell
her, to hold her, against God and devil, heaven and earth, and all
mankind. And he promised all he had, and all that was not his to promise
nor to give, rending her beliefs to shreds, trampling on the broken
fragments of all she had worshipped, tearing her chains link from link
and scattering them like straw down the storm of passionate contempt.
And then, again, pouring out love, and more love, and love again, as a
stream of liquid fire let loose to flood all it meets with dazzling
destruction and hot deat