‘Claudia!’ said Paul miserably, and sat staring before him with a white face.
‘I did almost hope,’ she said, ‘that you would have cared a little.’
‘Can’t you see?’ he answered—’ oh, can’t you see?’
‘I don’t want play-acting, Paul,’ said Claudia, searching for her handkerchief, ‘After all we have been to each other I expected a little genuine feeling.’
‘Claudia,’ he burst out, ‘you mustn’t go; you mustn’t leave me. I should break my heart without you.’
‘I must go, Paul,’ said Claudia.
‘Then I will go,’ cried Paul; ‘I can’t part from you.’
‘How can you go, silly boy?’ she answered, suffering him to take her hand in his and place his arm about her waist; ‘you have nothing to do in London; you know nobody there. You have excellent prospects here with Darco.’
‘Where you go I go,’ said the young idiot stanchly. ‘I could not live apart from you. You’re the world to me, Claudia.’
He meant it, every word, and in his contradictory heat and flurry and despair he felt as if there were no words at his call which were strong enough to express him.