‘Well?’ Larrie said heavily.
‘I’m going,’ answered Dot. ‘I’ve got my dress ready, and made all arrangements, it’s too late to stop now.’
Larrie swallowed some tea and went even whiter. This was the final wrecking of their lives. ‘Dot, I beg of you to think of it again,’ he said.
She slipped from her chair and went to his [p 101] ]end of the table. ‘Darling, let me go!’ she said, ‘see, I beg of you—you could give in and let me, and then it wouldn’t be disobedience.’ She put her arms round his neck, her flushed cheek against his, ‘Dear old Larrie, do! I have set my heart on it so! do let me go happy, dearest, dearest!’
If only at that minute she had said she would give it up, he could almost have let her go, greatly as he disliked the publicity for her, and the connection with Wooster. But he could not help mentally finishing her last sentence—‘Or I shall have to go unhappy.’
‘I can’t,—you must see I can’t,—how can I, Dot? it is impossible,’ he said. But she clung tighter.
‘Once you loved me too well to refuse me such a thing, my husband, don’t let me think I am so little to you now.’ He tried to put her away, but her arms held him.
‘Darling, let me,’ she begged, ‘let me, let me,’—the tears were running down her cheeks. ‘I will be so good afterwards, oh this is everything to me, Larrie,—Larrie, don’t be cruel to [p 102] ]me, I must, must go—oh, darling, let me, let me.’
He was making a promise to himself to be kept faithfully, since he saw how very much this was to her. If she would give in now, say she would give in as a true wife should to her husband, he would let her go, he would even take her himself, for it would prove she did not put that man before him.
‘Dot,’ he said, and lifted her on to his knee and held her hands tenderly in his own, ‘you must obey me in this, can’t you see you must, my darling? Perhaps I have been harsh or unkind about it. Yesterday I told you to obey me, now I ask you, my darling, my little girl, Dot, little, little wife. Say you will.’