“I—I beg your pardon; Faradeane, I mean. It’s just this: I’m half beside myself to-night. Being with her all this evening has set me all a-quiver, and—and the sight of that fellow Bradstone has upset me so terribly that—that I must—I must know my fate. I can’t go on any longer! I’ve got a dread upon me that if I don’t speak out now, at once, and tell her how I love her, and—and ask her to be my wife, that I—that this fellow will get before me, and——”
He stopped and wiped his brow with a hand that quivered.
Faradeane looked at him with his dark, sad eyes.
“And you came to ask my advice? You shall have it. Obey the impulse, Bertie; go and tell her you love her, as you suggest——”
He paused, stopped by a look in Bertie’s eyes.
“Well?”
“I—I—that isn’t what I wanted,” said the Cherub.
“No? What do you want, then?”
“I—I want you to do it for me,” said Bertie, in a low voice.
For a moment Faradeane sat motionless and speechless; then he laughed. It was a strange laugh, fuller of pain than of mirth, almost a laugh of bitterness.