I thought--I admit it--at one time I
would spend my life out there in the East, and the thought contented me.
But I had schooled myself into contentment, for I believed you married."
Ethne ever so slightly flinched, and he himself recognised that he had
spoken in a voice overloud, so that it had something almost of
brutality.
"Do I hurt you?" he continued. "I am sorry. But let me speak the whole
truth out, I cannot afford reticence, I want you to know the first and
last of it. I say now that I love you. Yes, but I could have said it
with equal truth five years ago. It is five years since your father
arrested me at the ferry down there on Lough Swilly, because I wished to
press on to Letterkenny and not delay a night by stopping with a
stranger. Five years since I first saw you, first heard the language of
your violin. I remember how you sat with your back towards me. The light
shone on your hair; I could just see your eyelashes and the colour of
your cheeks. I remember the sweep of your arm.... My dear, you are for
me; I am for you."
But she drew back from his outstretched hands.
"No," she said very gently, but with a decision he could not mistake.
She saw more clearly into his mind than he did himself.
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