He smiled indulgently. 'But nothing can happen if I am there. And it means such a lot to Dan. I think I told you that he is engaged to a girl----'
'Yes! yes! I know; I know. But, as I said, if I were the girl----' She broke off hurriedly, then began again. 'George, what has that to do with the question? Nothing will happen, of course, and then you will have lost your pleasure for nothing. Don't go! It is foolish. It is unkind--when we all want you to stay--when I want you--I do indeed--you will stay, won't you, George?--just to please me.'
To do her justice, she seldom stooped to use her own personal charm as she did then, wilfully; but the case was urgent--the boy must not go. George stared at her incredulously for a moment. 'Don't,' he said in a low voice; 'please don't.'
'But it is true, George,' she went on, laying her hand on his arm. 'I do want you to stay; I do indeed.'
His hand met hers suddenly, almost unconsciously, to fall away from it again in a gesture of quick renunciation.
'No! no!' he began in the same low tones, 'it isn't true--how can it be true?' Then his whole nature seemed to cast reserve aside, and his voice rose passionately. 'Why should you care? I have never thought you could--never--I swear to you never! How could I? Do you not see it is only what you are to me, not what I am to you? What does that matter? But for the other--for what you have been, and are, and will be all my life?--Ah! that is different--Yet you know that! well enough--you must know--for I can't tell it--not even to you.'
And there, English boy as he was, she saw him on his knee stooping to kiss the hem of her garment. It was cut in the latest fashion, full round the edge, and bordered by pearls of great size. They might have been of great price also--the Hodinuggur pearls, for instance--and George been none the wiser. He saw nothing but a blaze of light through the open gates of heaven showing him a woman, transfigured, glorified? And she? There was nothing before her eyes save a boy at her feet--a very ordinary boy, whose every-day admiration she had accepted carelessly; yet it was she who, covering her face with her hands, shrank back as if blinded.
'Don t,' she cried in sharp accents of pain. 'You don't know--I--I don't like it.'
He was on his feet again in an instant, blushing, confused. 'I--I beg your pardon,' he stammered. 'I don't know what induced me to--to behave like--like a fool.'
In sober truth he did not, being all unused to self-analysis, and far too young to understand his own instinctive recoil from the cheap cajolery which had caused his outburst. But she was older; she understood. He would not let her stoop, and yet--ah, God! how low she had stooped already! So the emotion she had wantonly provoked in him caught her and swept her from her feet.