So insistent was his tone, so almost menacing his attitude, that Isabel shrank from him with a gesture too swift to repress. The old pathetic furtive look was in her eyes as she made reply.
"I am very sorry. I don't see how I can help it. I--I am getting old, you know. That is the chief reason."
"You're talking nonsense, my dear girl." Impatiently Eustace broke in. "You are just coming into your prime. I won't have you ruin your life like this. Do you hear me? I won't. If you don't rouse yourself I will find a means to rouse you. You are simply drifting now--simply drifting."
"But into my desired haven," whispered Isabel, with a piteous quiver of the lips.
He straightened himself with a gesture of exasperation. "You are wasting yourself over a myth, an illusion. On my soul, Isabel, what a wicked waste it is! Have you forgotten the days when you and I roamed over the world together? Have you forgotten Egypt and all we did there? Life was worth having then."
"Ah! I thought so." She met his look with eyes that did not seem to see him. "We were children then, Eustace," she said, "children playing on the sands. But the great tide caught us. You breasted the waves, but I was broken and thrown aside. I could never play on the sands again. I can only lie and wait for the tide to come again and float me away."
He clenched his hands. "Do you think I would let you go--like that?" he said.
"It is the only kindness you can do me," she answered in her low voice of pleading.
He swung round to go. "I curse the day," he said very bitterly, "that you ever met Basil Everard! I curse his memory!"
She flinched at the words as if they had been a blow. Her face turned suddenly grey. She clasped her hands very tightly together, saying no word.
He went to the door and paused, his back towards her. "I came in," he said then, "to tell you that the de Vignes have offered to put us up at their place for the wedding. And I have accepted."
He waited for some rejoinder but she made none. It was as if she had not heard. Her eyes had the impotent, stricken look of one who has searched dim distances for some beloved object--and searched in vain.
He did not glance round. His temper was on edge. With a fierce movement he pulled open the door and departed. And behind him like a veil there fell the silence of a great despair.