“Miss Gail is not at home, sir,” she heard the butler say, and Gail paused with a sheet of music suspended in her hand, the whole expression of her face changing. She had only given instructions that one person should receive that invariable message.
“I beg your pardon, sir!” was the next observation Gail heard, in a tone of as near startled remonstrance as was possible to the butler’s wooden voice.
There was a sound almost as of a scuffle, and then Allison, with his top coat on his arm and his hat in his hand, strode to the doorway of the music room, followed immediately by the butler, who looked as if his hair had been peeled a little at the edges. Allison had apparently brushed roughly past him, and had disturbed his equanimity for the balance of his life.
Gail was on her feet almost instantaneously with the apparition in the doorway, and she still held the sheet of music which she had been about to deposit on one of the piles. Allison’s eyes had a queer effect of being sunken, and there was a strange nervous tension in him. Gail dismissed the butler with a nod.
“You were informed that I am not at home,” she said.
“I meant to see you,” he replied, with a certain determined insolence in his tone which she could not escape. There was a triumph in it, too, as if his having swept the butler aside were only a part of his imperious intention. “I have some things to say to you to which you must listen.”
“You had better say them all then, because this is your last opportunity,” she told him, pale with anger, and with a quaver in her voice which she would have given much to suppress.
He cast on her a look which blazed. He had not slept since he had seen her last. He smiled, and the smile was a snarl, displaying his teeth. Something more than anger crept into Gail’s pallor.
“I have come to ask you again to marry me, Gail. The matter is too vital to be let pass without the most serious effort of which I am capable. I can not do without you. I have a need for you which is greater than anything of which you could conceive. I come to you humbly, Gail, to ask you to reconsider your hasty answer of last night. I want you to marry me.”
For just a moment his eyes had softened, and Gail felt a slight trace of pity for him; but in the pity itself there was revulsion.