She cleared her hair from her brow.
"I--I swear to you, Carus, that never has Walter Butler so much as laid the weight of his little finger on my person! Yet he swayed me there--using that spell of melancholy, clothed in romance--and--I know not how it was--or how I listened, or how consented--it is scarce more than a dreadful dream--the trees in the moonlight, his voice so gentle, so pitiful, trembling, beseeching--and he had brought a clergyman"--again her hands covered her eyes--"and, ere I was aware of it, frightened, stunned in the storm of his passion, he had his way with me. The clergyman stood between us, saying words that bound me. I heard them, I was mute, I shrank from the ring, yet suffered it--for even as he ringed me he touched me not with his hand. Oh, if he had, I think the spell had broken!"
Again her tears welled up, falling silently; and presently the strength returned to her voice, and she went on: "From the first moment that I saw you, Carus, I understood what love might be. From the very first I closed my ears to the quick cry of caution. I saw you meet coquetry unmoved, I knew the poison of my first passion was in me, stealing through every vein; and every moment with you was the more hopeless for me. I played a hundred rôles--you smiled indifference on all. A mad desire to please you grew with your amused impatience of me. Curiosity turned to jealousy. I longed for your affection as I never longed for anything on earth--or heaven. I had never had a lover to love before. O Carus, I had never loved, and love crazed me! Day after day I wondered if I had been fashioned to inspire love in such a man as you. I was bewildered by my passion and your coldness; yet had I not been utterly mad I must have known the awful end of such a flame once kindled. But could I inspire love? Could you love me? That was all in the world I cared about--thinking nothing of the end, knowing all hope was dead for me, and nothing in life unless you loved me. O Carus, if I have inspired one brief moment of tenderness in you, deal mercifully with the sin! Guilty as I am, false as I am, I can not add a lie and say that I am sorry that you love me, that for one blessed moment you said you loved me. Now it is ended. I can not be your wife. I am too mean, too poor a thing for hate. Deal with me gently, Carus, lest your wrath strike me dead here at the altar of outraged Love!"