If she could have stirred she would have left him, but she had still an acute sense of her helplessness. She must stay and listen, let him say what he would. What was this conflict of feeling in her breast? Passionate love, passionate anger, scorn that made it sweet to wound him, fondness that made her long to fling herself upon his breast and cry, ‘Oh, give me shelter, give me rest! Let all the world go by. You and I can be all the world to each other.’ The yellow wintry light faded in the west, the sky grew dull and bleak, the headstones had a grayer look. ‘Why do you concern yourself about me?’ she asked bitterly. ‘You have come to assist at my wedding, in order that the conventionalities may not be outraged. That is all very right. My name has been bandied about on people’s lips quite enough already. It is just as well to avoid the scandal of your absence. But that ends all between us. We need never see each other’s faces after to-morrow. Why should we say hard things, or talk about the past? Had you not better go to the Vicarage, and let me go quietly home?’ She was much the calmer of the two, despite that inward struggle between love and resentment. He was mad with the pent-up feeling of all those long dreary days and nights in which he had fought with his passion, believing he had beaten it, only to find it now starting up in his soul, indestructible as the principle of evil. ‘Let you go! No,’ he cried, with his strong grasp upon her wrist. He who had been weak as a child a few short weeks ago, was strong now with all the strength of a desperate tempted soul. ‘No, I have got you, and I will not let you go. Oh, my love, my love, my lost and only love, I will not let you go till I have told you something of the truth.’ His arms were round her now, her head drawn close to his breast, his eyes looking down into hers, with fond despairing love, his words hurrying thick and fast from lips that trembled as they spoke.