Verena spoke to the others, but she looked at her lover, and the
expression of her eyes was ineffably touching and beseeching. She
trembled with nervous passion, there were sobs and supplications in her
voice, and Ransom felt himself flushing with pure pity for her pain--her
inevitable agony. But at the same moment he had another perception,
which brushed aside remorse; he saw that he could do what he wanted,
that she begged him, with all her being, to spare her, but that so long
as he should protest she was submissive, helpless. What he wanted, in
this light, flamed before him and challenged all his manhood, tossing
his determination to a height from which not only Doctor Tarrant, and
Mr. Filer, and Olive, over there, in her sightless, soundless shame, but
the great expectant hall as well, and the mighty multitude, in suspense,
keeping quiet from minute to minute and holding the breath of its
anger--from which all these things looked small, surmountable, and of
the moment only. He didn't quite understand, as yet, however; he saw
that Verena had not refused, but temporised, that the spell upon
her--thanks to which he should still be able to rescue her--had been the
knowledge that he was near.
"Come away, come away," he murmured quickly, putting out his two hands
to her.
She took one of them, as if to plead, not to consent. "Oh, let me off,
let me off--for _her_, for the others! It's too terrible, it's
impossible!"
"What I want to know is why Mr.
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