“London is uninhabitable to me, if I do as you ask,” he said.
She looked up, the tears escaping from her eyes.
“Ah, and the world to me, if you don’t!”
George sat down in an arm-chair; he abandoned the hope of running away. Neaera rose, pushed back her hair from her face, and fixed her eyes eagerly on him. He looked down for an instant, and she shot a hasty glance at the mirror, and then concentrated her gaze on him again, a little anxious smile coming to her lips.
“You will?” she asked in a whisper.
George petulantly threw his gloves on a table near him. Neaera advanced, and knelt down beside him, laying her hand on his shoulder.
“You have made me cry so much,” she said. “See, my eyes are dim. You won’t make me cry any more?”
George looked at the bright eyes, half veiled in tears, and the mouth trembling on the brink of fresh weeping. And the eyes and mouth were very good.
“It is Gerald,” she said; “he is so strict. And the shame, the shame!”
“You don’t know what it means to me.”