He longed to declare, nay, rather to thunder forth, the
words: "This is my promised wife! Through weary days and nights, with
sore feet and sorer heart she has been coming to me. Burned by the sun
and blinded with the dust, hungry and thirsty, and aching in every
fibre, her trust never faltered, her love never failed. And her love
is matched by mine. The loyalty and devotion of my life I lay at her
poor bleeding feet."
That would have satisfied his imagination, but in real life imagination
must always go a-hungering. He sat down beside her with a face far
more weary than her own.
"Wanda," he burst forth, "my poor fatherless, friendless child, what
can I say to you? I am a villain, a coward, a reptile! I thought I
loved you, and I do not. No, though my heart aches for you, I do not
love you. Oh, you look as though I were murdering you, and it is
better for me to murder you now by a few sharp terrible words, than by
a life-time of neglect and loathing."
The colour had all ebbed from her face. She fell on her knees beside
him, and her liquid childish eyes and sweet lips were upraised to his.
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