“Never mind about my kindness, do you love me?”
“I—but—no—not—” she stammered a series of disconnected words, and came to a stop.
He took a step nearer to her and said in an authoritative voice, “Answer me. Will you be my wife?”
“I can’t,” she said, in the lowest tone he could hear.
“You can’t? Then it’s no again?”
“It’s not exactly no. Or if it is, it’s not the same kind of no it was before.”
“What do you mean by that? There’s only one kind of no in a matter like this.”
“Well, this is a different kind. It must be a different kind. It mustn’t be a no that makes us strangers as it did before.”
He gave a suppressed exclamation, angry and violent, and turned to the table for his hat.
“A man’s not a fool or a child,” he said, “to be spoken to like that.”