make me hate you?"

"There is nothing in the world more to me than your life; you know that.
How can you think it of me?"

"Because you don't understand--because you don't know that--oh, that I
love you! I--no--I didn't mean--I didn't mean--"

What had she said? What had happened? How was it that the words that
yesterday she would have been ashamed to so much as whisper to herself
had now rushed to her lips almost of their own accord? After all those
years of repression, suddenly the sweet, dim thought she had hidden in
her secretest heart's heart had leaped to light and to articulate words.
Unasked, unbidden, she had told him that she loved him. She, she had
done this thing when, but a few moments before, her anger against him
had shaken her to her very finger-tips. The hot, intolerable shame of it
smote like fire into her face. Her world was cracking about her ears;
everything she had prized the dearest was being torn from her,
everything she had fancied the strongest was being overthrown. Had she,
she who had held herself so proud and high, come at last to this?

Swiftly she turned from him and clasped her hands before her eyes and
sank down into the chair she had quitted, bowing her head upon her arms,
hiding her face, shutting herself from the light of day, quivering and
thrilling with an agony of shame and with an utter, an abject
self-contempt that was beyond all power of expression. But the instant
she felt Bennett's touch upon her shoulder she sprang up as if a knife
had pierced her, and shrank from him, turning her head away, her hand,
palm outward, before her eyes.

"Oh, please!" she begged piteously, almost inarticulately in the stress
of her emotion, "don't--if you are a man--don't take advantage--please,
please don't touch me. Let me go away."

She was talking to deaf ears. In two steps Bennett had reached her side
and had taken her in his arms. Lloyd could not resist. Her vigour of
body as well as of mind was crushed and broken and beaten down; and why
was it that in spite of her shame, that in spite of her unutterable
self-reproach, the very touch of her cheek upon his shoulder was a
comfort? Why was it that to feel herself carried away in the rush of
this harsh, impetuous, masculine power was a happiness? Why was it that
to know that her prided fortitude and hitherto unshaken power were being
overwhelmed and broken with a brutal, ruthless strength was an
exultation and a glory? Why was it that she