She drew back, astonished.
"Oh! how can you think of it, Mr. Otway?"
"Why should I not?" he spoke in a low and soft voice, but with vehemence. "Does she know all about me?"
"Everything. It was not I who told her. There has been talk——"
"Of course there has"—he smiled—"and I am glad of it. I wished her to know. Otherwise, I should have told her. Yes, I should have told her! It shocks you, Mrs. Hannaford? But try to understand what this means to me. It is the one thing I greatly desire in all the world, shall I be hindered by a petty consideration of etiquette? A wild desire—you think. Well, the man sentenced to execution clings to life, clings to it with a terrible fierce desire; is it less real because utterly hopeless? Perhaps I am behaving frantically; I can't help myself. As that engagement is still doubtful—you admit it to be doubtful—I shall speak before it is too late. Why not have done so before? Simply, I hadn't the courage. I suppose I was too young. It didn't mean so much to me as it does now. Something tells me to act like a man, before it is too late. I feel I can do it. I never could have, till now."
"But listen to me—do listen! Think how extraordinary it will seem to her. She has no suspicion of——"
"She has! She knows! I sent her: a year ago, a poem—some verses of my writing, which told her."
Mrs. Hannaford kept silence with a face of distress.
"Is there any harm," he pursued, "in asking you whether she has ever spoken of me lately—since that time?"
"She has," admitted the other reluctantly, "but not in a way to make one think——"