“No,” she said dryly. “I thought not. Miss Jaffray has every reason to be flattered at your attitude. I can only be thankful that you at least possess the virtue of silence—that you really are man enough to preserve the confidence of the women of your acquaintance. Otherwise, I myself might fare badly.”
“Stop, Jane!” he cried, coming forward and seizing her by the elbows. “It’s sacrilege. Look up into my eyes. You dare not, because you know that I speak the truth, because you know that you’ll discover in them a token of love unending—the same look that you’ve always found there, because when you see it you will recognize it as a force too great to conquer—too mighty to be argued away for the sake of a whim of your injured pride. Look up at me, Jane.”
He had his arms around her now; but she struggled in them, her head still turned away.
“Let me go, Mr. Gallatin,” she gasped. “It can never be. You have hurt me—mortally.”
“No. I’ll never let you go, until you look up in my eyes and tell me you believe in me.”
“It’s unmanly of you,” she cried, still struggling. “Let me go, please, at once.”
Neither of them had heard the opening and closing of the front door, nor seen the figure which now blocked the doorway into the hall, but at the deep tones which greeted them, they straightened and faced Mr. Loring.
“I beg your pardon, Jane,” he was saying with ironical amusement. “I chose the wrong moment it seems,” and then in harsher accents as Gallatin walked toward him. “You! Jane, what does this mean?”
Miss Loring had reached the end of the Davenport where she stood leaning with one hand on its arm, a little frightened at the expression in her father’s face, but more perturbed and shaken by the fluttering of her own heart which told her how nearly Phil Gallatin had convinced her against her will that there was nothing in all the world that mattered except his love and hers.