But she would not give him a direct answer.
“There are many things to be considered,” was her vague reply.
He stood before her, pulling the long ends of his ragged moustache, fighting with a hundred impulses, not one of which had any sort of reason or logic to recommend it. He was interested in this girl, preposterously interested, considering how far removed she was from the type which he had always supposed himself to admire the most. If he had been well off, if even he had been anything but the struggling poor devil of a beginner at life that he was, he knew that he should have cast discretion, common sense to the winds, and that he should have asked her to marry him—him, Bartlett Bayre, hater of spirited woman, and worshipper at the shrine of placid, purring womanhood without a word to say for itself.
As it was, however, that madness was not possible to him. He could not offer to take a girl reared in luxury, as he presumed she was, to share a London garret with him. But the wish, the impulse that prompted this mad thought shone in his eyes, and probably communicated itself to Miss Eden, who blushed when she looked at him, and gave a glance round, preparatory to running away.
“So you’ve come by yourself to-day,” she remarked, turning the conversation as she caught sight of the boat waiting for him.
“Yes. I wanted to see you before—before going away.”
Her manner became thoughtful again.
“When do you go?” said she.
“In four days.”
“Back to London?”