She looked wretched.
“Well, what were you going to say? You needn’t mind about being unkind. You forget I am used to it.”
“I was going to say—” She hesitated again, searching about for words. “Oh, don’t you realise that I don’t trust you? Why do you put me in the difficult position of having to say this, just now of all times! Can’t we leave it at that? Won’t you believe I am grateful for the other night, and leave it there?”
“No. By God! I won’t,” and there was something almost fierce about him. The very fact that she shrank from him, only seemed to madden him, and it was as though he tried to soothe his own goaded feelings by goading hers. “The other night has only made it more impossible to leave it there. Why, when I found you, I took you in my arms—you know I did.” The colour flashed in her cheeks, and he ran on: “Just as if—feeling as I do—having once had you in my arms, I’m going to tamely let you go again. Why, I never took my eyes off you the whole time. When I couldn’t see your face, I watched your hair. It was freezingly cold, and I never knew it. It might just as well have been overpoweringly hot. I had got you—there—all alone—in my care—dependent on me—icebergs and volcanoes themselves couldn’t have crushed me.” He stopped as if he could hardly trust himself to say any more, and with a desperate attempt to bring him back to a commonplace level she said, “Please don’t go on. You’ve managed to be cold enough the last three weeks. Let us go back to that again.”
“You silly little goose!”—and he laughed harshly—“cold—to you! ah, ah! I was no more cold then than I am now, of course I wasn’t. When we have been together you haven’t said a word that I have not heard, nor moved an inch without my knowing. It was a subterfuge to see if you noticed; and you did. Ah, ah, Paddy, that’s one to me. You know you wanted me to quarrel, and I wouldn’t. Now own up.”
He tried to take her hand, but she drew away, and stood with them both clasped behind her. She began to feel that the whole situation was getting beyond her.
Then suddenly, with his customary variableness, Lawrence grew quiet again.
“You say you don’t trust me. Well, I will show you I can be trusted. I have never cared enough before. Is that altogether my fault? I care enough now, and I will show you. Is it that alone that stands between us? If you could trust me, you would let yourself go? Paddy!”—he moved suddenly nearer, and looked squarely into her eyes—“just as if I didn’t know that under ordinary circumstances I should win you easily enough. I’m not bragging. Heaven knows I’ve faults enough, but bragging is not among them. It’s because, somehow, I know that under ordinary circumstances it would be natural for your love to surrender to mine, before anyone else you know, that I snap my fingers when you protest that you hate me, and refuse to be daunted. If I could slay the spectre between us, and show you that I was to be trusted, would you marry me?”
Paddy looked hard at the loch, and said, “No.”
“Why not?”