"Oh, I like you!" she cried. "I like you!"
He looked down at her. "That's not enough."
He saw her eyes darken, her mouth grow tremulous, but she controlled her lips and fortified herself against this new insistence. "Then you must give me everything."
"I will. Theresa, forgive me. I've lived too long without you. And if you will come round the estate with me to-morrow, I'll show you where and how my people live."
"Bless you! Thank you. I really want to help, and, of course I'll come." She gave him his reward. "Don't let us quarrel, because—I love you."
He caught her hands. "Do you? Do you?"
"Am I not proving it? I'm thrusting myself into a very uncomfortable place because of you. If you are not very nice I shan't be able to endure it. Mrs. Morton tells me you all dine regularly with each other once a month! This is a dreadful welding of opposites! But love—love is supposed to be a strong cement."
"And I love you more than ever, Theresa, more every day." He kissed her with a violence that hurt her lips. They parted painfully, and she looked up at him with a tiny crease between her brows, before she thrust her face into his coat, burrowing there, holding fearfully to his arm.
"Keep me," she said. "Keep me."
He had no words tender enough for her. The appeal swelled his love to a flood too full for turbulence, and he stroked her hair, drew her to his knee and rocked her there, so that she felt secure and was comforted like a child.