Beyond the Rocks

"It seems to me it is because the time grows nearer when we must go back

to the world. First to dinner with the others, and then--Paris. I would

like to stay thus always--just alone with you."

She did not refute this solution of her sadness. She knew it was true.

And when he looked into her eyes, the blue was troubled with a mist as

of coming tears.

Then passion--more mighty than ever--seized him once more. He only felt

a wild desire to comfort her, to kiss away the mist--to talk to her. Ah!

"Theodora!" he said, and his voice vibrated with emotion, while he bent

forward and seized both her hands, which he lifted to his face--she had

not put on her gloves again after the tea--her cool, little, tender

hands! He kissed and kissed their palms.

"Darling--darling," he said, incoherently, "what have I done to make

your dear eyes wet? Oh, I love you so, I love you so, and I have only

made you sad."

She gave a little, inarticulate cry. If a wounded dove could sob, it

might have been the noise of a dove, so beseeching and so pathetic. "Oh,

please--you must not," she said. "Oh, what have you done!--you have

killed our happy day."

And this was the beginning of his awakening. He sat for many moments

with his head buried in his hands. What, indeed, had he done!--and they

would be turned out of their garden of Eden--and all because he was a

brute, who could not control his passion, but must let it run riot on

the first opportunity.

He suffered intensely. Suffered, perhaps, for the first time in his

life.

She had not said one word of anger--only that tone in her voice reached

to his heart.

He did not move and did not speak, and presently she touched his hands

softly with her slender fingers, it seemed like the caress of an angel's

wing.

"Listen," she said, so gently. "Oh, you must not grieve--but it was too

good to be true, our day. I ought to have known to where we were

drifting, I am wicked to have let you say all you have said to-day, but

oh, I was asleep, I think, and I only knew that I was happy. But now you

have shown me--and oh, the dream is broken up. Come, let us go back to

the world."

Then he raised his eyes to her face, and they were haggard and

miserable.

How her simple speech, blaming herself who was all innocent, touched his

heart and filled him with shame at his unworthiness.