“What was your vow? Why shouldn’t I have had a syllable from you?”
He sat motionless, still holding her with a look so gentle that it almost seemed forgiving.
Then abruptly he rose, and crossing the space between them, sat down in a chair at her side. The deliberation of his movement might have implied a forgetfulness of changed conditions, and Lizzie, as if thus viewing it, drew slightly back; but he appeared not to notice her recoil, and his eyes, at last leaving her face, slowly and approvingly made the round of the small bright drawing-room. “This is charming. Yes, things have changed for you,” he said.
A moment before she had prayed that he might be spared the error of a vain return upon the past. It was as if all her retrospective tenderness, dreading to see him at such a disadvantage, rose up to protect him from it. But his evasiveness exasperated her, and suddenly she felt the inconsistent desire to hold him fast, face to face with his own words.
Before she could reiterate her question, however, he had met her with another.
“You did think of me, then? Why are you afraid to tell me that you did?”
The unexpectedness of the challenge wrung an indignant cry from her.
“Didn’t my letters tell you so enough?”
“Ah, your letters!” Keeping her gaze on his in a passion of unrelenting fixity, she could detect in him no confusion, not the least quiver of a sensitive nerve. He only gazed back at her more sadly.
“They went everywhere with me—your letters,” he said.