“I would burn my hand from my arm and my arm from my body,” he went on, with the same wild intensity, “rather than trouble her or frighten her, but I couldn’t help speaking to her any more than I can help wanting to see her again—the feeling that I MUST—whatever you say or do, whatever Keredec says or does, whatever the whole world may say or do. And I will! It isn’t a thing to choose to do, or not to do. I can’t help it any more than I can help being alive!”
He paused, wiping from his brow a heavy dew not of the heat, but like that on the forehead of a man in crucial pain. I made nervous haste to seize the opportunity, and said gently, almost timidly:
“But if it should distress the lady?”
“Yes—then I could keep away. But I must know that.”
“I think you might know it by her running away—and by her look,” I said mildly. “Didn’t you?”
“NO!” And his eyes flashed an added emphasis.
“Well, well,” I said, “let’s be on our way, or the professor will be wondering if he is to dine alone.”
Without looking to see if he followed, I struck into the path toward home. He did follow, obediently enough, not uttering another word so long as we were in the woods, though I could hear him breathing sharply as he strode behind me, and knew that he was struggling to regain control of himself. I set the pace, making it as fast as I could, and neither of us spoke again until we had come out of the forest and were upon the main road near the Baudry cottage. Then he said in a steadier voice:
“Why should it distress her?”
“Well, you see,” I began, not slackening the pace “there are formalities—”