“Hang the practice!” he said rudely. “I want to marry you.”
This bomb, which had been clumsily preparing from the outset, exploded with little effect. Peggy certainly lowered her eyes, and the warm blood mounted to her cheeks; but she did not appear overwhelmed by this frank declaration. It was, indeed, whatever emotion swayed the speaker, so shorn of sentiment in itself that the girl was relieved of any fear she might have entertained of hurting him with a refusal. Had she been as much in love with him as he had professed to be with her, her answer would still have been “No.”
“I am sorry,” she said, a trifle unsympathetically. “I don’t, you see, want to marry you.”
“Don’t say ‘no’ without at least considering my proposal,” he urged blankly. “I’ll wait—as long as you wish. But I can’t take ‘no’ like that. I’ve never wanted anything in all my life as I want you. Don’t be so unkind, Peggy, as to refuse me a little hope. I’m an ass, I know. And perhaps I have been a little abrupt—”
“Well, a little,” agreed Peggy.
“Do you mind,” she added quickly, seeing him clutch desperately at a second palm-leaf in his agitation, “keeping to the leaf you have already spoiled?”
He dropped the worried leaf as though it had stung him, and half turned from her.
“You are heartless,” he exclaimed with bitterness, taking his defeat ill, recognising that it was a defeat even while he refused to accept her answer as final. He had been so confident of success that his failure was the more humiliating in consequence of his former assurance.
“I feel certain,” he resumed more quietly, “that later you will be a little sorry for your unkindness to me. I never loved anyone till I met you. I love you very earnestly.”
“I’m sorry,” said Peggy again. “I would be a little more sympathetic if I knew how. But, you see, I have never been in love in my life.”