“Is this what you have lost, Pip?”
Meg’s voice came in almost a whisper, with a note of great yearning in it,—oh, if only he would laugh, and give a ridiculously simple explanation of it all! She hardly dared to look at his face for fear of what she should find there; her hand, outstretched to him with the gold circle on its palm, trembled like a leaf.
The scarlet leaped up into his face as if he had been a girl; his very brow and neck and ears were deeply dyed. He snatched the ring from the little soft palm, and held it in his own closed hand; his eyes were like coals on fire.
[108]
]But Meg faced him quietly; all her courage gathered in her hands now the need had come.
“You were going to marry the little dressmaker, Philip,” she said.
He told her a lie, two or three lies; then he abused her violently for her interference and prying; then, kneeling as he was, he put both his arms round her waist and prayed her, if she had any love for him, not to try to ruin the happiness of his life.
Oh the young, wild, passionate face, the imploring words! It almost broke Meg’s heart to see him. Such a boy again,—oh, surely not a man now,—not twenty yet, and so headstrong. She felt years and years older than he—felt almost as if she were his mother, and he a child begging to play with the fire.
Strange wisdom came to her. She neither railed nor mocked, reproached nor wept. “And after you are married, what then, Pip?” she said, her voice quite even. “Fifty pounds a year won’t go very far; and I suppose father will stop even that.”
He flung back his head with its crisp waves and curls, the light came into his eyes.
“I can work,” he said, and smiled proudly.