His voice had an odd urgency. It was as if he pleaded with her.
“Oh, I quite realize that,” she said, and she strove to force a practical note into her reply. “We’ve been very unlucky, but what can’t be cured must be endured. We shall come through it somehow.”
She would have removed her hand, despite the physical reluctance to relinquish the warmth of his, but he held it fast.
“You don’t want me to go?” he said.
“Oh no!” she returned briskly. “I am not so selfish and unreasonable as that. We must just make the best of it. We must just—just——”
She broke off. Her teeth were chattering again, and in the effort to check them, she forgot the words she was trying to utter.
She felt him bend lower, and found him kneeling by her side. “It’s no good offering you my coat,” he said. “There’s no warmth in it. Besides, it’s wet through. But I’m not going to let you die of cold for all that—just for the sake of an idiotic convention. Frances—sweetheart—I’m going to hold you in my arms.”
Fear stabbed her—sharp and agonizing. “Oh no!” she said, and drew herself back from him. “Not here! Not now!”
Her hand remained locked in his, but he paused.
“Why not here—and now?” he said.