But to break
into tears, to murmur incoherently between laughter and sobbing that
it could not be helped, but she loved him, wildly, passionately,
would give every shred of her body into his hands if he would but
take it--against this, in the sweating of her whole strength, she
was battling lest he should guess her secret.
"Do you want to come again, then?" he repeated, when she continued
to look at him with frightened eyes, saying nothing.
"Yes, of course; of course I do."
"But why--why?" he insisted.
This reached the summit of his cruelty--blind cruelty it may have
been--but it dragged her also to the climax of her mood. Like the
falling of the Tower of Babel, with its crumbling of dust and its
confusion of tongues, she tumbled headlong from her pinnacle of
strength.
"Oh, don't, please!" she moaned, and then in torrents came the tears;
in an incoherent toppling of sound, the little cries of her weeping
rushed from her; and Traill, hurled from the sling of impulse, was
kneeling at her feet.
"I'm awfully sorry," he kept on saying; "I'm awfully sorry."
Even then he but vaguely understood, had not rightly guessed the
verge upon which she was treading.
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