"And have I no wrongs?" he broke in. "Did you think I was n't a man at all, but just a lump of putty to be moulded by your hands? How do you suppose I felt when we were married in New York, and you left me at the very door of the church?" "I did n't realise till then what I had done," she gasped, the panic of that moment returning to her, "and I had to leave you." "But I did realise it," he cried bitterly, "as any man would have realised it. I realised nothing else. I walked the streets, wondering whether it was a practical joke. You made a fool of me. You did n't tell me beforehand that you were going to play such a trick on me." "Trick!" "Yes, trick! What else, in the name of God, was it? It seemed like nothing else, at first. I could hardly remember what you said,--you spoke so confused and were so anxious to get away,--but finally I figured it out that you were just scared, and that I would have to wait a little while for you to get used to the idea that you were my wife." He paused, choked by emotion. "I waited, God knows," he went on, "waited for nearly three years. And what did I get? A few stolen meetings and a few kisses, not very genuine ones at that. Somehow you carried the thing out in your father's high-handed way. I could n't break through and get at you. Every time we met I thought I would, but instead I took advice and promises, until it became a habit of mind. I became tired of the mockery, and heart-sick. You made yourself seem less and less my wife. And when I did n't see you for weeks at a time, and when I was filled with resentment, I met Lena"-- "And did the very thing that lost me to you forever," she supplemented relentlessly. They had come to a point where the road ascended and ran along the margin of a great stone quarry, from which the material that went into the building of St. George's Hall had been hewn. The air had grown momently colder, condensing the mist, which now floated away in milky wreaths, disclosing the full moon shining down upon the wide sweep of the valley toward the west. Stung to madness by her words, he stopped and turned upon her, but his answer died on his lips, for he looked into a face of such surpassing beauty that he seemed never to have seen it truly before. The gathered crimson hood invested it with something of the sorcery that Leigh had felt, that any man must have felt. The divinity that had hitherto hedged about the bishop's daughter vanished for the first time like a vanishing mist, and left her only an irresistible woman standing alone with him in the moonlight. The impulse that swept over him was one of sheer desire. Lena had taught him what a woman's kisses could be, kisses such as Felicity had never given him, such as he would now have from her as his right. Before she could anticipate his intention, he had seized her roughly and strained her to his breast with a violence that hurt.