It was altogether wrong. She knew quite well that she ought not to be there alone with him in the night. She had not allowed for his following her to Wortheton. The shock of seeing him again unnerved her.

Steele soothed her and kissed the tears away. Then he started to walk again, keeping his arm about her.

"We can't talk here," he said. "I've a lot of things to say to you.

We'll cut across the fields and sit on that jolly stile where I discovered you picking primroses--was it really seven years ago? Seven years! My G.o.d! Prudence, what a fool I was to believe you would wait for me till that time."

"I didn't know..." she faltered.

"Never mind," he said quickly. "We won't speak of it. We'll wipe the years out. You are here--with me. The other is just a dream. It was yesterday that we picked primroses together, and spent the morning mooning in the woods. You were so sweet, dear. I just loved you. I so longed to kiss you that day. What a fool I was not to kiss you. I remember so well how the sunlight played on your hair. I watched it, and loved it--and you. Oh, my dear!"

"Don't!" Prudence urged him. "I can't bear it. And I ought not to listen. You mustn't say these things to me--now."

"But I must," he said. And added: "Now! Why not now? It's my time.

As though it matters--anything. I'm not going to consider anything but just my need of you. You are mine, by every right under the sun."

"No," she protested. "No! I can't let you say these things. I ought not to have come out with you. Don't make me regret coming."

He was silent for a while after that; and she heard him breathing in hard deep breaths as he walked close by her side. Many emotions stirred him; pa.s.sion and desire and resentment strove furiously within him, making speech difficult, and defeating his effort after control. The sense of loss, of defeat, weighed bitterly with him. He wanted her so, wanted her with an intensity that resembled hunger--wanted her urgently, savagely, with a crude, primitive, human want that was for setting aside every consideration, every civilised law and code; that was for taking the law into his own hands and making her see eye to eye with himself.

And she would not see things as he wished her to. She was difficult.

She was altogether too civilised.

He turned to her abruptly, and snapped the silence sharply by hurling an unexpected question at her.

"Why did you come out?" he asked. "What did you expect?"

"I don't know," she answered, and drew a little away from him. "I think I wanted to talk to you just once more before--we parted."

"Oh!" he said, with a short laugh. "So that was it? If that was your only reason you shouldn't have come. I'm not intending to part--like that anyhow. I wanted to talk to you on quite another subject. You were stolen from me. I'm for stealing you back. I haven't any scruples--of that kind Mine was the greater injury. I love you. You love me. You can't deny that, Prudence."

Prudence made no attempt to deny it. She faced him fully in the moonlight with her steady eyes lifted to his in saddened appeal. He realised the quiet strength of her nature with a sense of impotent anger in feeling it opposed to his will. There was going to be a fight in any case and the issue appeared uncertain.

"Whether we love one another or not," she said, "we have to bear in mind that I am married."

She was indeed more conscious of the fact at the moment than of any other. She felt the necessity of impressing it upon him. But Steele needed no reminding. The rage in his heart leapt up at her words like a flame fed by some combustible fluid. He seized her roughly in his arms and rained hot kisses upon her mouth.

"But you don't love him?" he breathed. "You don't love him?" He stared at her as she pushed his face back, and laughed harshly. "G.o.d! Do you suppose I'm not bearing it in mind?--every moment since I learned the truth from your lips? It's like murder in my heart, that knowledge.

I'd like to kill him. I could have struck him in the face that night when he came in and found us together, and took you away. And he knows... He knows that only the legal tie binds you to him. I saw the knowledge in his eyes. He doesn't trust you. If he knew that you were out here, walking with me in the night, he would believe the worst.

He's that type of man. Nothing you could say would convince him otherwise. They are made like that, those narrow, strictly conventional people. They daren't trust their own emotions; they never allow them full play. And they don't trust any one else. They judge others by their own feeble standards. They aren't human--it's sawdust, not blood, in their veins."

He helped her over the first stile and led her along the field-path and so on to the next gate. Prudence was rather silent and worried and somewhat dispirited. She left him to do the talking, and walked on like a woman only half awake, to whom everything appears hazy and a little unreal. And he unfolded his views to her on life, and love, and happiness, and the right of the individual to independent action.

"It's not as though this business of marriage were a natural inst.i.tution," he argued; "it's purely artificial. When a man and a woman are honestly in love they don't bother with that aspect of the relationship. They just want one another. Marriage is merely a result attendant on the natural impulse. I came home with the idea of marrying you, and I find you no longer free. That fact maddens me; its fills me with despair. But it doesn't alter the initial fact that I want you.

That desire is no less keen than before I heard of your marriage.

Prudence, dearest, be true to yourself. You love me. Come with me-- now. I came down here for that purpose--to take you away with me."

He pulled her down on the stile beside him and put his arm about her and held her close to him. She did not repulse him. She felt strangely little angry at what he said. She was too greatly moved to experience the lesser emotions which a sense of outraged virtue might have called forth at another time. She had hurt this man badly; and she felt too sorry for him to resent in indignant terms the proposal which he made.

He wanted her, wanted her urgently; and they loved one another. Why had she allowed the years to separate them so irrevocably?

"You don't answer," he said, and brought his face nearer to here and looked her in the eyes. "You don't answer me."

His voice shook with hardly repressed pa.s.sion; his whole form shook.

She felt the shoulder which pressed against her shoulder tremble, and the hand which gripped hers trembled also, and was burning to the touch.

"You don't answer," he said again hoa.r.s.ely.

"My dear," she said, "what is there to say?" And broke down again and wept.

CHAPTER THIRTY EIGHT.

There was a great deal which she might have said, Steele thought, as he held her sobbing in his arms, and tried to convince her that happiness for both of them lay in following the path along which he sought to direct her steps. He wanted her so; and they loved one another--two all-sufficient reasons, as he saw matters, for throwing such deterrent considerations as honour and duty to the winds. They owed a duty to themselves as well as to others, he argued; and a loveless marriage was dishonouring. She ought not to submit to the spoiling of both their lives from motives of no higher consideration than fear of the world's censure.

"What does it matter to us what any one thinks?" he asked. "This ruling of one's life by the world's opinion is ridiculous. Here we are, you and I, in love with one another, wanting one another. Life is very sweet and precious while one loves. Prudence, but it isn't worth more than a sigh when one is denied love. I want to make you mine before I leave for France. We'll have our time together. Then, when I come back, I will take you with me--to a new country where no one knows anything about us. Dear, we shall be so happy."

"You may never come back," Prudence said, and sat up and started to dry her tears. "What would become of me then?"

"I may not, of course." He stared at her with his hot eager eyes, careless in that hour of pa.s.sionate longing about the consequences involved. He knew that for himself there was only one certainty--the present. He lived in the present; it was useless to look ahead.

"Aren't you ready to risk something? I'd rather leave you my widow than not have you," he declared. "I can't go away feeling that you belong to some one else. Prudence, I'm mad with jealousy. I'm jealous of that man's claim on you. I'm beside myself. I don't know what I'm saying.

I know only one thing--I want you. I'm just hungry for you. I can't rest."

"Oh, hush!" she said.

"But you've got to hear," he insisted. "You've got to know. I've been like this since you told me your news. I lie awake at nights, thinking, thinking, till it seems as if I were going mad. I think of you always.

I'm wanting you always. For years I've thought of you as mine. I meant from the beginning to win you. Life's just a nightmare for me while I know you belong to some one else. You made a mistake. Set it right, dear--as far as you can. Give yourself to me. Say you will--now."

He seized her again in his arms and held her and set his lips to hers.

Frightened as well as distressed. Prudence struggled against him, pushed his face gently away. She felt the quick beating of his heart against her breast while he held her close, and she knew that her own heart was beating as rapidly; the pulses in her throat were going like tiny hammers. The ardour of his kisses excited her. All the natural impulses of youth, repressed so long, leapt up to answer his pa.s.sion and flamed into warmth beneath his touch. He stirred her, tempted her. She had never experienced pa.s.sionate love before, but she knew it now; it burned her lips and set her blood on fire. She was a woman alight with love for the first time in her life. Her eyes glowed softly, and behind their glow, dried up as it were by that flame of love, the mist of sorrow's unshed rain welled slowly and dimmed her sight of him.

"You can't refuse me," he pleaded. "My darling, you can't send me out of your life."

"Oh, don't!" she sobbed, and clung to the gate, half swooning, and rested her face on her arm. "You've no right to say these things to me; it's wicked of me to listen. I ought not to have come out. I don't know what to do. I don't know what to say to you. It's all so difficult."

He refused to admit the difficulty.

"If you had an ounce of pluck," he said--"if you cared, you would know what to do all right. I am asking you for one thing; it's yes or no.

Prudence."

He gripped her shoulder and pulled her forcibly round till she faced him again.

"Look here!" he cried hoa.r.s.ely. "Listen to me for a moment. This may be the last time I shall see you--it will be the last time, if you refuse what I ask. If I didn't know that you love me I wouldn't worry you. I shouldn't want you if you did not want me. But you do. I don't care a d.a.m.n about your marriage. If you'll trust me, and come to me, you shall never regret it. Oh! my little love!--my sweetheart! Don't refuse what I ask. It means everything to me. Say you will, dear?"

"Oh, don't!" she entreated him again, and shrank back from the pa.s.sion in his eyes.

But his arms were about her; they held her tightly.

"Are you afraid?" he said, his face grim and set. "I'm dangerous to you to-night, and you know it. Here we are alone in the night together.

What is to prevent me from taking what I want? Why should I consider your scruples--or anything? I am going out to that inferno... Why shouldn't I seize my good hour before I go? What's to prevent me?

What's to prevent me from kissing you now?"

He leaned over her and rained kisses on her mouth, kisses that seared her lips, that almost stifled her. He was giving rein to his pa.s.sion.