Why do you try to deceive me?
Do you think I cannot see it in your face ?" "It is nothing.

It comes now and then, and goes away again almost at once." Marietta had come close to him while she was speaking.

One hand hung by her side within his reach.

He longed to take it, with such a longing as he had never felt for anything in his life; he resisted with all the strength he had left.

But he remembered that he had held her hand in his yesterday, and the memory was a force in itself, outside of him, drawing him in spite of himself, lifting his arm when he commanded it to lie still.