"If you ever began," Christina added to her own sentence. At last her face was raised, and now it was his eyes that fell before the cool acumen of her smile.
"You don't believe in me yet!" he groaned. "Not yet, though I wait, wait, wait."
"No one asked you to wait," Lord Manister was reminded.
"But you see that I can't help it! You see that I am miserable about you!"
This indeed was sufficiently plain; and the sight of his misery was softening Christina by degrees. She said more kindly:
"Listen to me, Lord Manister. It is a month since you saw me. At this moment you may feel what you are saying. Very well, then, you do feel it; but have you felt it throughout the last month? Have you felt so patient—you are far too patient—all the time? Has it never seemed to you that my keeping you in doubt, even for one month, was a piece of impertinence you ought never to have stood? Wouldn't your friends simply think you mad if they knew how you were allowing me to use you? Haven't you yourself occasionally remembered who you are, and who I am, and burst out laughing? I must say I have; it sometimes seems to me so utterly absurd—— And you see you can't answer my questions!"
He could not; one after another they had penetrated to the quick.
"They are not fair questions," Manister said doggedly. "What may have crossed my mind when I have felt worried and wretched has nothing to do with it. Isn't it enough that I tell you I can wait your own good time—that I feel a pride in waiting, now we are together and I am looking in your eyes?"
"No, I don't think that's quite enough," replied Christina softly. "It would hardly be enough, you know, if you only felt me worth waiting for while you were with me. That would mean that for some reason I fascinated you. And fascination isn't love, Lord Manister. I don't want to be rude—much less unkind—but I can't believe that you have ever been really in love with me; I simply can't!"
Yet she had never felt so near to that belief before. Her words, however, helped Lord Manister back to his dignity.