What a punishment for one instant's folly! If they knew they would not let me suffer this way!--They would want me to tell them--" His dry lips unclosed.

"Then _tell_ them!" he tried to say, but the words were without sound; and, in the crisis of temptation, at the very instant of yielding, suddenly he knew, somehow, that he would not yield.
It came to him calmly, without surprise or shock, this stupid certainty of himself.

And at the same moment the crisis was passing, leaving him stunned, impassive, half senseless as the resurgent passion battered at his will power, to wreck and undo it--deafening, imperative, wave on wave, in vain.
The thing to do was to hold on.

One of them was adrift; the other dared not let go; he seemed to realise it, somehow.

Odd bits of phrases, old-fashioned sayings, maxims long obsolete came to him without reason or sequence--"Greater love hath no man--no man--no man--" and "As ye do unto the least of these "-- odd bits of phrases, old-fashioned sayings, maxims, alas! long obsolete, long buried with the wisdom of the dead.
He held her still locked in his arms.