"Oh, I thought you were much older!" said Angelica, glad of any distraction from this awful topic.
To her amazement, Eddie sprang to his feet and looked down at her, quite pale with anger.
"No doubt!" he cried. "No doubt you looked on me as a dull, tiresome, middle-aged man. You’re like all women—you must have a handsome man—any fool with a handsome face, who’ll make you fine speeches! If I’d go down on my knees and rant and rave like a damned actor—but I won’t! I’m not that sort. I tell you, in a straightforward way, that I—I ask you to marry me. I’m—I’ve got nothing to be ashamed of—nothing! One or two little things in the past—but nothing serious. I mean, no one can reproach me. I’ve never harmed any one."
"Oh, I know it!" she cried. "It’s not that. I know you’re good—too good for me. I think an awful lot of you, Mr. Eddie. Only——”
"Only what?"
"I couldn’t!"
"Now, see here, Angelica, I haven’t much time. I’ve come away in the very middle of my office hours to—settle this. I can’t work, I can’t do anything until this is off my mind. It’s—don’t be unreasonable, please, Angelica!"
"I’m not, Mr. Eddie; but—I just can’t!"
"Do you mean," he said, "that I’m—distasteful to you?"
That was his weak point, his sorest spot, this sense of his own unattractiveness, his unpopularity. He had labored too long under disadvantages too crushing; he couldn’t acquire the self-respect to which his qualities entitled him. He had never been loved, not even by his own mother, and he could not destroy a conviction, persisting from childhood, that he was in some mysterious way unlovable and repulsive.