“You know me better.”
“I do, my darling,” he said in a low impassioned voice, which I heard quite plainly, though I had gone to the window and was looking out into the street. “Then let us settle it at once. I am in your hands, Miriam, as I have been from the day I first set eyes upon you. At present I am wretched—miserable—my whole thoughts are of you, and I feel at times half-mad—that I cannot wait. Do you wish to torture me?”
“No.”
“Then be my dear honoured wife in a week’s time—a fortnight? What, still shaking your head? Well, then, there: I am the most patient of lovers—in a month from to-day?”
“No, no, I cannot,” she said; and in place of being so calm she spoke now passionately. “You must wait, dear John, you must wait.”
“Then there is something,” he cried, in a low, angry voice. “Some wretch has been maligning me.”
“Indeed no.”
“You have been told that I am wasteful and a spendthrift?”
“I should not have listened to any such charge.”
“Then that I am weak, and untrustworthy, and gay?”