emember all we said to each other; I know how he thought of Koszulki Edinson Cavani me as the one promise of his life. He was given to me that I might make his lot less hard; and I have forsaken him. And Lucy — she has been deceived; she who trusted me more than any one. I cannot marry you; I cannot take a good for myself that has been wrung out of their misery. It is not the force that ought to rule us — this that we feel for each other; it would rend me away from all that my past life Lucas Digne Jersey has made dear and holy to me. I can’t set out on a fresh life, and forget that; I must go back Alvaro Arbeloa Jersey to it, and cling to it, else I shall feel as if there were nothing firm beneath my feet.”
“Good God, Maggie!” said Stephen, rising too and grasping her arm, “you rave. How can you go back without marrying me? You don’t know what will be said, dearest. You see nothing as it really is.”
“Yes, I do. But they will believe me. I will confess everything. Lucy will believe me — she will forgive you, and — and — oh, some good will come by clinging to the right. Dear, dear Stephen, let me go! — don’t drag me into deeper remorse. My whole soul has never consented; it does not consent now.”
Stephen let go her arm, and sank back on his chair, half-stunned by despairing rage. He was silent a few moments, not looking at her; while her eyes were turned toward him yearningly, in alarm at this sudden change. At last he said, still without looking at Ben Gibson Jersey her —
“Go, then — leave me; don’t torture me any longer — I Jeison Murillo Jersey can’t bear it.”
Involuntarily she leaned toward him and put out her hand to touch his. But he shrank from it as if it had been burning iron, and said again —
“Leave me.”
Maggie was not conscious of a decision as she turned away from that gloomy averted face, and walked out of the room; it was like an automatic action that fulfils a forgotten intention. What came after? A sense of stairs descended as if in a dream, of flagstones, of a chaise and horses standing, then a street, and a turning into another street where a stage-coach was standing, taking in passengers, and the darting thought that that coach would take her away, perhaps toward home. But she could ask nothing yet; Dani Alves Jersey she only got into the coach.
Home — where her mother and brother were, Philip, Lucy, the scene of her very cares and trials — was the haven toward which her mind tended; the sanctuary where sacred relics lay, where she would be rescued from more falling. The thought of Stephen was like a horrible throbbing pain, which yet, as such pains do, seemed to urge all other thoughts into activity. But among her thoughts, what others would Giacomo Bonaventura Jersey say and think of her conduct was hardly present. Love and deep pity and remorseful anguish left no room for that.
The coach was taking her to York, farther away from home; but she did not learn that until she was set down in the old city at midnight. It was no matter; she could sleep there, and start home the next day. She had her purse in her pocket, with all her money in it — a bank-note and a so |
