But Dinah shrank at the question, as though he had probed a wound. "Oh, I can't tell you that! As long as I have realized that I was bound to him--I have been afraid! And now--now that it has come so close--" She broke off. "Oh, but I can't draw back now," she said hopelessly. "Think--only think--what it will mean!"
Scott was silent for a few seconds, then: "If it would be easier for you to go on," he said slowly, "perhaps--in the end--it may be better for you; because he honestly loves you, and I think his love may make a difference--in the end. Possibly you are nearer to loving him even now than you imagine. If it is the dread of hurting him--not angering him--that holds you back, then I do not think you would be doing wrong to marry him. If you are just scared by the thought of to-morrow and possibly the day after--"
"Oh, but it isn't that! It isn't that!" Dinah cried the words out passionately like a prisoner who sees the door of his cell closing finally upon him. "It's because I'm not his! I don't belong to him! I don't want to belong to him! The very thought makes me feel--almost--sick!"
"Then there is someone else," Scott said, with grave conviction.
"Ah!" It was not so much a word as the sharp intake of breath that follows the last and keenest thrust of the probe that has reached the object of its search. Dinah suddenly became rigid and yet vibrant as stretched wire. Her silence was the silence of the victim who dreads so unspeakably the suffering to come as to be scarcely aware of present anguish.
But Scott was merciful. He withdrew the probe and very pitifully he closed the wound that he had opened. "No, no!" he said. "That has nothing to do with me--or with Eustace either. But it makes your case absolutely plain. Come with me now--before you feel any worse about it--and ask him to give you your release!"
"Oh, Scott!" She looked up at him at last, and though there was a measure of relief in her eyes, her face was deathly. "Oh, Scott,--dare I do that?"
"I shall be there," he said.
"Yes,--yes, you will be there! You won't leave me? Promise!" She clasped his arm in entreaty.
He looked into her eyes, and there was a great kindness in his own---the kindness of Greatheart arming himself to defend his pilgrims. "Yes, I promise that," he said, adding, "unless I leave you at your own desire."