"Oh, of course, I know that I am not a lovable individual," said Percival, throwing himself back on the cushions with a savage scowl.
She looked up quickly: there was a bitter word upon her tongue, but she refrained from uttering it. The struggle lasted for a moment only; then she went over to him, and laid her hand softly upon his arm.
"Percival, are you always going to be so hard upon me?" she said. "I know you do not easily forgive, and I have wronged you. Can I do more than be sorry for my wrong-doing? I was wrong to object to your wishes. I will marry you when you like: you shall decide everything for me now!"
His face had been gloomily averted, but he turned and looked at her as she said the last few words, and took both her hands in his.
"I'm not quite such a brute as you think me, Elizabeth," he answered, with some emotion in his voice. "I don't want to make you do what you find painful."
"That is nonsense," she said, more decidedly than he had heard her speak for many days. "The whole matter is very painful to both of us at present. The only alleviation——"
"Well, what is the only alleviation? Why do you hesitate?"
She lifted her serious, clear eyes to his face.
"I hesitated," she said, "because I did not feel sure whether I had the right to speak of it as an alleviation. I meant—the only thing that makes life bearable at all is the trying to do right; and, when one has failed in doing it, to get back to the right path as soon as possible, leaving the sin and misery behind."
He still held her hands, and he looked down at the slender wrists (where the blue veins showed so much more distinctly than they used to do) with something like a sigh.