“Give it up? Do you mean break off our engagement?” he faltered. “Sylvia!”
She was twisting a few blades of grass into a plait, and looking down at that. But his words evidently distressed her.
“Oh, don’t you think we had better?” she exclaimed, with the appeal of a child.
He had been conscious of so exquisite a relief that his honour took alarm.
“Why?” he said, leaning forward. “What is your reason?”
She looked up at him, evidently troubled; the prettiness of her face pathetically touched with the quite new struggle to explain a feeling.
“Don’t you know what I mean? I can’t say it exactly, Walter. I thought you would be sure to understand. Don’t you know? People must be very fond of each other, mustn’t they?”
All the better part of him was quickened by a perception of her sweetness and humility. But the devil set him answering with conscious untruth, and almost roughness—
“So, Sylvia, you’ve never cared for me!”
Her distress shamed him.