oved! you said: 'He who was
once my lover:'--you said that. What does it mean? Not that--not--? does
it mean, all's over? Why did you bring me here? You know I must love you
forever. Speak! 'Once?'"

"'Once?'" Emilia was breathing quick, but her voice was well contained:
"Yes, I said 'once.' You were then."

"Till that night in Devon?

"Let it be."

"But you love me still?"

"We won't speak of it."

"I see! You cannot forgive. Good heavens! I think I remember your saying
so once--Once! Yes, then: you said it then, during our 'Once;' when
I little thought you would be merciless to me--who loved you from the
first! the very first! I love you now! I wake up in the night, thinking
I hear your voice. You haunt me. Cruel! cold!--who guards you and
watches over you but the man you now hate? You sit there as if you
could make yourself stone when you pleased. Did I not chastise that man
Pericles publicly because he spoke a single lie of you? And by that act
I have made an enemy to our house who may crush us in ruin. Do I regret
it? No. I would do any madness, waste all my blood for you, die for
you!"

Emilia's fingers received a final twist, and were dropped loose. She
let them hang, looking sadly downward. Melancholy is the most irritating
reply to passion, and Wilfrid's heart waged fierce at the sight of
her, grown beautiful!--grown elegant!--and to reject him! When, after a
silence which his pride would not suffer him to break, she spoke to ask
what Mr. Pericles had said of her, he was enraged, forgot himself, and
answered: "Something disgraceful."

Deep colour came on Emilia. "You struck him, Wilfrid?"

"It was a small punishment for his infamous lie, and, whatever might be
the consequences, I would do it again."

"Wilfrid, I have heard what he has said. Madame Marini has told me. I
wish you had not struck him. I cannot think of him apart from the days
when I had my voice. I cannot bear to think of your having hurt him. He
was not to blame. That is, he did not say: it was not untrue."

She took a breath to make this last statement, and continued with the
same peculiar implicity of distinctness, which a terrific thunder of
"What?" from Wilfrid did not overbear: "I was quite mad that day I went
to him. I think, in my despair I spoke things that may have led him to
fancy the truth of what he has said. On my honour, I do not know. And I
cannot remember what happened after for the week I wandered alone about
London