“Yes, I was going to tell you. If I do not, you trust me?”
“Gerard, of course. I should trust you always. But—I am only a woman, and—curious,” she added, with a tender smile of reproachful invitation.
“And if I assure you it is for your own sake that I hold this back, you will bear with me?”
“For my sake? Now in truth you increase my perplexity, and do but whet my appetite. How can it be for my sake? You said to-day that it concerned the very purpose of your coming here; and when I spoke of that purpose as I knew it—our marriage, Gerard—you started back as if in alarm or overwhelming surprise. You pained me so that I was leaving you in anger.”
“The pain was greater on my side than yours, Gabrielle.”
“And then you suggested you had been led to deceive me in some strange way: I should not believe that, indeed; and, as if impelled by some sudden thought, you were about to tell me everything. And then my uncle came, and you whispered hurriedly that what you had to say was for my ears alone. Are we not alone now?” she asked with witching pressure; and she smiled tenderly, as she added: “You see I remember every word you said. Indeed, I could never forget them; but I cannot understand”; and she shook her head as if the puzzle were all beyond her solving.
“If you but trust me, what else can matter?” he answered, at a loss how to meet her.
“Nothing, nothing now,” she cried joyfully, moving a little closer to him so that her shoulder was against his. “Chide me if I seem too persistent. I have had so much of my own way in my life that I must be getting self-willed, I think. But don’t make the chiding too harsh, Gerard. And do not keep me too long with this secret between us; I think I shall grow jealous of it. And—another condition,” she laughed: “Do not tell any one before you tell me. I could not bear that.”
“You are even harder to resist when you yield, Gabrielle, than when you plead, I fear.”
“Am I? Then I will yield that I may plead. But I will wait your time. Of course I will. It is such delight to me to find you what you are, that all else is nothing. Besides, it is the first request you have made to me, and I should be a churl to refuse it. I did not think of that, and could be angry with myself for having forgotten it. I would not hear you now, if you were to offer to tell me.” Her laugh at this was as that of a child in its pure delight.