"Listen to her!" cried Tussie, interrupting his kissing of her hands to look up at Priscilla and smile with a sort of pitying wonder, "Let you go? Does one let one's life go? One's hope of salvation go? One's little precious minute of perfect happiness go? When I'm well again I shall be just as dull and stupid as ever, just such a shy fool, not able to speak—"
"But it's a gracious state"—stammered poor Priscilla.
"Loving you? Loving you?"
"No, no—not being able to speak. It's always best—"
"It isn't. It's best to be true to one's self, to show honestly what one feels, as I am now—as I am now—" And he fell to kissing her hands again.
"Tussie, this isn't being honest," said Lady Shuttleworth sternly, "it's being feverish."
"Listen to her! Was ever a man interrupted like this in the act of asking a girl to marry him?"
"Tussie!" cried Lady Shuttleworth.
"Ethel, will you marry me? Because I love you so? It's an absurd reason—the most magnificently absurd reason, but I know there's no other why you should—"
Priscilla was shaken and stricken as she had never yet been; shaken with pity, stricken with remorse. She looked down at him in dismay while he kissed her hands with desperate, overwhelming love. What was she to do? Lady Shuttleworth tried to draw her away. What was she to do? If Tussie was overwhelmed with love, she was overwhelmed with pity.