If she
would but do that, and ignore the past, would he not ignore it? Would he
not forget Alftruda, and King William, and all the world, and go up with
her into Sherwood, and then north to Scotland and Gospatrick, and be a man
once more?
No. He would go with her to the Baltic or the Mediterranean.
Constantinople and the Varangers would be the place and the men. Ay, there
to escape out of that charmed ring into a new life!
No. He did not deserve such luck; and he would not get it.
She would talk it all out. She must, for she was a woman.
She would blame, argue, say dreadful words,--dreadful, because true and
deserved. Then she would grow angry, as women do when they are most in the
right, and say too much,--dreadful words, which would be untrue and
undeserved. Then he should resist, recriminate. He would not stand it. He
could not stand it. No. He could never face her again.
And yet if he had seen a man insult her,--if he had seen her at that
moment in peril of the slightest danger, the slightest bruise, he would
have rushed forward like a madman, and died, saving her from that bruise.
And he knew that: and with the strange self-contradiction of human nature,
he soothed his own conscience by the thought that he loved her still; and
that, therefore--somehow or other, he cared not to make out how--he had
done her no wrong.
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