"
"Two years!" she repeated dully. "Two years I should never have left
you--it was wrong! And yet--can two years work so great a change in
any one? Ah, no, no--this cannot be you--so cold--so hard and cruel!
Oh, if we might but have those two years back again when you were your
own dear self and I your loving gipsy girl with no ambition but to be
worthy of--just you! O Peregrine, is your love for me truly dead--so
soon?"
As thus she spoke, all pleading, passionate entreaty, she came towards
me with both arms outstretched, her eyes abrim with tears; but,
frowning at her ungloved hand, I started back so hurriedly that she
stopped and looked at me as if I had struck her; then she shrank away,
her proud head drooped, her arms fell and she covered her face. "Then
it is true!" she gasped, "all--dreadfully true." And upon the silence
stole the sweetly plaintive notes of the blackbird calling, calling
from the orchard below.
And as she stood thus, bowed and shaken with her grief, I kept my gaze
ever upon that betraying scarabaeus ring. Suddenly she raised her head
and I saw her tearless but very pale.
"Yes, you are changed," said she, in that strange, passionless tone,
"quite changed; your eyes are cold, your face cruel and hard and
yet--O dear God!" she cried, "O dear God, I cannot believe your love
is truly dead--how can I? O dear, dear Peregrine, tell me you do love
me still--if only just a little--oh, be merciful, dear--!"
And now indeed she was weeping but, blinded by her tears, choked by
her sobs, she yet reached out her arms to me in mute appeal; and it
seemed that somehow her tears were blinding me also, her passionate
sobs shaking me, for I stood in a mist, groping for the support of my
chair-back; indistinctly I heard a voice speak that I knew was mine.
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