I laughed through my tears.
“O, I mean nothing sentimental,” said he; “but only that, my room being next to yours, and the common ladder to both conducting through your room, I’ve been forced by your wilfulness to sleep all night below in a chair. But we’ll remedy that somehow with a screen, and so settle any question of precedence in going to bed.”
I stared at him, half fearfully.
“Why have you brought me here?” I whispered.
“What! again?” he said, shaking a finger at me.
“It seems, for no reason but to humble and abuse me. I was happy with poor Gogo.”
“Damn Gogo!” he said, in such a sudden heat that it brought a cry from me. Then, all in an instant, to my amazement and distress, he had fallen on his knees beside the bed.
“What is Gogo to you, or you to him?” he cried, in a low, intense voice. “Has he ruined himself for you as I have done? Has he risked death, destruction, madness? pined for you in dreams, and plotted to gain you waking, as I have ever since you, a child, took my reason by storm, and bound it to you by golden chains?”
His fervour and passion quite overwhelmed me. I could only cower, trembling, before him.
“What do you mean?” I whispered. “How have you ruined yourself—for my sake?”