“Miss Nunn, I am more serious than you will give me credit for being. The sentiment, as you call it, has troubled me for some time, and will last.”
Her refuge failed her. The cup she was holding began to shake a little.
“Please let me put it aside for you.”
Rhoda allowed him to do so, and then locked her fingers.
“I am so much in love with you that I can’t keep away from this house more than a few days at a time. Of course you have known it; I haven’t tried to disguise why I came here so often. It’s so seldom that I see you alone; and now that fortune is kind to me I must speak as best I can. I won’t make myself ridiculous in your eyes—if I can help it. You despise the love-making of ballrooms and garden parties; so do I, most heartily. Let me speak like a man who has few illusions to overcome. I want you for the companion of my life; I don’t see very well how I am to do without you. You know, I think, that I have only a moderate competence; it’s enough to live upon without miseries, that’s all one can say. Probably I shall never be richer, for I can’t promise to exert myself to earn money; I wish to live for other things. You can picture the kind of life I want you to share. You know me well enough to understand that my wife—if we use the old word—would be as free to live in her own way as I to live in mine. All the same, it is love that I am asking for. Think how you may about man and woman, you know that there is such a thing as love between them, and that the love of a man and a woman who can think intelligently may be the best thing life has to offer them.”
He could not see her eyes, but she was smiling in a forced way, with her lips close set.
“As you insisted on speaking,” she said at length, “I had no choice but to listen. It is usual, I think—if one may trust the novels—for a woman to return thanks when an offer of this kind has been made to her. So—thank you very much, Mr. Barfoot.”
Everard seized a little chair that was close by, planted it beside Rhoda’s, there seated himself and took possession of one of her hands. It was done so rapidly and vehemently that Rhoda started back, her expression changing from sportive mockery to all but alarm.
“I will have no such thanks,” he uttered in a low voice, much moved, a smile making him look strangely stern. “You shall understand what it means when a man says that he loves you. I have come to think your face so beautiful that I am in torment with the desire to press my lips upon yours. Don’t be afraid that I shall be brutal enough to do it without your consent; my respect for you is stronger even than my passion. When I first saw you, I thought you interesting because of your evident intelligence—nothing more; indeed you were not a woman to me. Now you are the one woman in the world; no other can draw my eyes from you. Touch me with your fingers and I shall tremble—that is what my love means.”
She was colourless; her lips, just parted, quivered as the breath panted between them. She did not try to withdraw her hand.