“I feel depressed and worried and strung up and run down to-night,” she said. “Do you remember that admirably sensible American girl at Athens, who said that all such feelings were stomach? I expect it is quite true, but I don’t see how it helps one. I don’t feel sure of myself. Tom very often makes me feel like that. He’s so wonderfully sure of himself.”
Manvers’ hands fidgeted with the arms of his chair, and he lit a cigarette, and threw it away. This sort of experience was new to him.
“And now as we’ve finished talking about Tom,” he said at length, “it is time that we should talk about me.”
Maud rushed for the loophole. She might as well have hoped to have stopped an express by stretching a piece of string across the line.
“I should like to talk a little more about him,” she said. “I was so surprised at that third crisis.”
“Tom is so honest with his crises,” said Manvers, “he faces them like a man.”
“Well, it’s no use running away from a crisis,” said Maud; “you might as well run away from a flash of lightning.”
“And I too think it is best to face a crisis,” said he, “and ... and ... my crisis has come.”
Maud sat still, waiting for the inevitable.
“It is this,” he said suddenly, “that I love you. That I would die for you, or live for you: that I offer you myself to take into your hand.”