“I can’t, in the face of facts. I am unfit to earn my own living—far more hers. The only atonement I could make for my cruelty to her was to be crueller to myself, to set her free. You say that she is changed? Looks terribly——?”
Maurice had raised his head now, and with his arms still cast out upon the table, turned haggard eyes upon his friend.
“She looks terribly ill.”
“And she sticks to me, the little darling!”
“She certainly stuck to you,” said Geoffrey, still looking down into the fire. He had almost a half laugh as he presently added, “You surely would not have expected her not to! No, Maurice; you wouldn’t be here this evening if I had seen any hope of her not sticking.”
For any further meaning in these words as to his presence Maurice had no ear; they too disagreeably emphasized that sense of contrast with which his sorrowing mind was occupied. They made him involuntarily droop his head as he sat shifting the pens and ink-pot. The thought of Angela went with a shuddering sickness through him. In this silence came Geoffrey’s voice again, its mocking quality gone. Gravely now he said, “Maurice, do you want to marry her?”
At this Maurice started to his feet. “What are you talking towards, Geoffrey? Why did you ask me to come here? You love her yourself. Tell me the truth—do you hope to marry her?”
“I told you that I wouldn’t have asked you to come if I’d had any hope.”
“To marry her I’d sacrifice anything and everything,” said Maurice, altogether believing in what he said. At last he seemed to have seized hold of a real self. He and Felicia; all the rest was a dream.
Geoffrey still looked in the fire. He spoke musingly, with obviously no consciousness of superiority in his claim.