"On Friday week next I am to go away."
"Nonsense! You shall not."
"Your sisters say, yes! Mr. Pericles has got my father's consent, they say, to take me to Italy."
"Do you think of going?"
Emilia gazed at her nerveless hands lying in her lap.
"You shall not go!" he breathed imperiously in her ear.
"Then you will marry me quite soon?" And Emilia looked as if she would be smiling April, at a word.
"My dear girl!" he had an air of caressing remonstrance.
"Because," she continued, "if my father finds me out, I must go to Italy, or go to that life of torment in London—seeing those Jew-people— horrible!—or others and the thought of it is like being under the earth, tasting bitter gravel! I could almost bear it before you kissed me, my lover! It would kill me now. Say! say! Tell me we shall be together. I shudder all day and night, and feel frozen hands catching at me. I faint—my heart falls deep down, in the dark…I think I know what dying is now!"
She stopped on a tearless sob; and, at her fingers' ends, Wilfrid felt the quivering of her frame.