, and--I
didn't."

"So, then, you told me a lie? You wrote lie after lie to me in your
letters for a year?"

She writhed away from him, but he still held her by the wrists, face to
face with him, the length of their arms apart.

"Let me go, Vincent! You've no right to hold me in this way. You're
hurting my arm!"

Unconsciously his grasp had tightened till the diamond mounted on one of
her thread-like bracelets was pressed into her flesh and made it bleed.

"See there!"

He let her go. She sat down and put her pocket-handkerchief to her
wrist.

"If you tell lies, Audrey, what am I to believe? What you said then, or
what you say now?"

"I'm telling the truth now, because I don't want this wretched
misunderstanding to go any further."

"Can't you speak plainly? Do you mean this, that you don't love me?"

"Yes. It's true. I don't love you; I can't--at least, not like that."

"I can't believe it! It's impossible! As long as I can remember,
whatever you said or did, you made me think you loved me. You said last
year you'd be my wife; but that's nothing. Long before that, you let me
live on the hope of it, year after year. It's inconceivable that you
could have done these things if you didn't care for me. Even you
couldn't be such an unfeeling little fiend."

"No, no; you worked on my feelings. You wouldn't let me have any will of
my own. And now you want me to marry you whether I like it or not.
Whatever happens, I can't do that, Vincent."

"Why not?"

"Must I tell you?"

"Isn't that the very least you can do?"

"Well--you know, Vincent, you've been very wild; you've told me so
yourself a thousand times."

"Is it that? You knew that long ago."

"I never realised it till now. Now I know that I can only really love
some one strong and good, whose goodness would help me and make me good
too."

Audrey's infantile irony made Hardy laugh. That laugh frightened her.

"Do you think I don't know that?" he said. "What do you suppose I went
out of England for? It wasn't to shoot, or to farm either. It was to get
away out of the reach of temptation, to live in a pure air, and make
myself pure for your sake. Do you know, Audrey, I was out there, without
a soul to speak to, a year, one horrible long year, fighting the devil,
waiting till I could come back and tell you that I was fit to love you.
God knows I'm not all I ought to be,--who is? At least, I'm not ashamed
now to ask you to be my wife. Will you never f