“Miss Pellissier,” he said, “these gentlemen are your friends, and therefore they are my friends. If I am to have no other opportunity I will speak before them. I came here to beg you not to sign that contract. I came to beg you instead to do me the honour of becoming my wife.”
“And I,” Courtlaw said, “although I have asked before in vain, have come to ask you once more the same thing.”
“And I,” Brendon said, humbly, “although I am afraid there is no chance for me, my errand was the same.”
Anna looked at them for a moment with a pitiful attempt at a smile. Then her head disappeared suddenly in her hands, and her shoulders shook violently.
“Please forgive me—for one moment,” she sobbed. “I—I shall be all right directly.”
Brendon rushed to the piano and strummed out a tune.
The others hurried to the window. And Anna was conscious of a few moments of exquisite emotion. After all, life had still its pulsations. The joy of being loved thrilled her as nothing before had ever done, a curious abstract joy which had nothing in it at that moment of regret or even pity.
She called them back very soon.
The signs of tears had all gone, but some subtle change seemed to have stolen into her face. She spoke readily enough, but there was a new timidity in her manner.
“My friends,” she said, “my dear friends, I am going to make the same answer to all of you—and that is perhaps you will say no answer at all. At present I cannot marry, I will not become bound even to any one. It would be very hard perhaps to make you understand just how I feel about it. I won’t try. Only I feel that you all want to make life too easy for me, and I am determined to fight my own battles a little longer. If any of you—or all of you feel the same in six months’ time from to-day, will you come, if you care to, and see me then?”