He was silent, still tightly clasping her hand.
After a pause, she made a gentle movement to withdraw it; but at that he turned with a sudden mastery and thrust his arms about her. "Daisy," he broke out passionately, "I can't do without you! I can't! I can't! I've tried,—Heaven knows how I've tried! But it can't be done. It was madness ever to attempt to separate us. We were bound to come together again. I have been drifting towards you always, always, even when I wasn't thinking of you."
Fiercely the hot words rushed out. He was holding her fast, though had she made the smallest effort to free herself he would have let her go.
But Daisy sat quite still, neither yielding nor resisting. Only at his last words her lips quivered in a smile of tenderest ridicule. "I know, my poor old Blake," she said, "like a good ship without a rudder—caught in a strong current."
"And it has been the same with you," he insisted. "You have always wanted me more than—"
He did not finish, for her hand was on his lips, restraining him. "You mustn't say it, dear. You mustn't say it. It hurts us both too much. There! Let me go! It does no good, you know. It's all so vain and futile—now." Her voice trembled suddenly, and she ceased to speak.
He caught her hand away, looking straight up at her with that new-born mastery of his that made him so infinitely hard to resist.
"If it is quite vain," he said, "then tell me to go,—and I will."
She tried to meet his eyes, but found she could not. "I—shall have to, Blake," she said in a whisper.
"I am waiting," he told her doggedly.