Gerald smiled. “Very well; then you shan’t be. I will treat you as if—as if I doubted you. Then will you be satisfied?”
Neaera tried to smile at this pleasantry. She was kneeling by Gerald’s chair as she often did, looking up at him.
“Doubted me?” she said.
“Yes, since you won’t let your eyes speak for you, I will put you to the question. Will that be enough?”
Poor Neaera! she thought it would be quite enough.
“And I will ask you, what I have never condescended to ask yet, dearest, if there’s a word of truth in it all?” Gerald, still playfully, took one of her hands and raised it aloft. “Now look at me and say—what shall be your oath?”
Neaera was silent. This passed words; every time she spoke she made it worse.
“I know,” pursued Gerald, who was much pleased with his little comedy. “Say this, ‘On my honour and love, I am not the girl.’”
Why hadn’t she let him alone with his nonsense about her eyes? That was not, to Neaera’s thinking, as bad as a lie direct. “On her honour and love!” She could not help hesitating for just a moment.
“I am not the girl, on my honour and love.” Her words came almost with a sob, a stifled sob, that made Gerald full of remorse and penitence, and loud in imprecations on his own stupidity.