"Well, I'm sure I don't know what more you could have said," sobs she, still dissolved in tears, and in a tone full of injury.
"But there wasn't any harm in that," protests he, taking one of her hands from her face and pressing it softly to his lips. "It is a sort of thing" (expansively) "one does every day."
"Do you do it every day?"
"No: I never did it before. And" (very gently) "you will answer me, won't you?"
No answer, however, is vouchsafed.
"Georgie, say you will marry me."
But Georgie either can't or won't say it; and Dorian's heart dies within him.
"Am I to understand by your silence that you fear to pain me?" he says, at length, in a low voice. "Is it impossible to you to love me? Well, do not speak. I can see by your face that the hope I have been cherishing for so many weeks has been a vain one. Forgive me for troubling you: and believe I shall never forget how tenderly you shrank from telling me you could never return my love."
Again he presses her hand to his lips; and she, turning her face slowly to his, looks up at him. Her late tears were but a summer shower, and have faded away, leaving no traces as they passed.
"But I didn't mean one word of all that," she says, naïvely, letting her long lashes fall once more over her eyes.