“You seem to care a great deal!” he said violently; “you’re thinking of nothing but that infernal piece of work, that I loathe the very sight of. Don’t you think you could do without it for five minutes, at all events?”
She let her hands drop into her lap, but made no other reply.
“You’re not a bit like what you used to be. You seem to take a delight in snubbing me and shutting me up. I must say, I never thought you’d have turned into a prig!” He felt this reproach to be so biting that he paused upon it to give it its full effect. “Here I am going to England in four days, and to India in four months, and it’s ten to one if I ever come home again. I mean to volunteer for the very first row that turns up. But it’s just the same to you, you won’t even take the trouble to say you’re sorry.”
“If you had taken the trouble to answer my letters last autumn, you wouldn’t be saying these things to me now,” she said, speaking low and hurriedly.
“I don’t believe it! I believe if you had cared about me then you wouldn’t treat me like this now.”
“I did care for you,” she said, while the hard-held tears forced their way to her eyes; “you made me do it, and then you threw me over, and now you’re trying to put the blame on me!”
He saw the glisten on her eyelashes, and it almost took from him the understanding of what she said.
“Francie,” he said, his voice shaking, and his usually confident eyes owning the infection of her tears, “you might forget that. I’m miserable. I can’t bear to leave you!” He sat down again beside her, and, catching her hand, kissed it with a passion of repentance. He felt it shrink from his lips, but the touch of it had intoxicated him, and suddenly she was in his arms.
For a speechless instant they clung to each other; her head dropped to his shoulder, as if the sharp release from the tension of the last fortnight had killed her, and the familiar voice murmured in her ear:
“Say it to me—say you love me.”