"You are not going to do that wretched thing—marry without love?" he said, stopping abruptly. "Do not, Margaret, do not! I know you better than you know yourself, and you will not be able to bear it. Some women can; but you could not. You have too deep feelings—too—"
He did not finish the sentence, for she had turned from him suddenly, and was walking across the dusky space in the centre of the great temple whose foundations were so grandly laid six centuries ago.
But he followed her and stopped her, almost by force, taking both her hands in his. "You must not do this," he said; "you must not marry in that way. It is dangerous; it is horrible; for you, it is a crime." Then, as he stood close to her and saw two tears well over and drop from her averted eyes, "Margaret! Margaret!" he said, "rather than that, it would have been better to have married even me."
She drew her hands from his, and covered her face; she was weeping.
"Is it too late?" he whispered. "Is there a possibility—I love you very deeply," he added. And, cold and indifferent as Florence considered him, his voice was broken.
When they came round to the ray again, he gave the blind beggar all the small change he had about him; the old man thought it was a paper golconda.
"You owe me another circuit," he said; "you did not speak through fully half of the last one."
So they went around a second time.
"Tell me when you first began to think about me," he said, as they passed the choir. "Was it when you read that letter?"
"It was an absurd letter."