“Well, little woman! Who—who—!”
“Doesn’t love him,” a trifle lamely.
“Ah, Paddy! you were going to say ‘hate,’ and the lie died on your lips.”
She flushed in the firelight, but continued bravely:
“It makes very little difference. The fact remains that I do not love you and I will not marry you.”
“Marry me first, and I will soon teach you to love.”
She felt her breath coming fitfully and her pulses leaping strangely, and she bit her teeth together to steady herself as she still stared into the fire. Oh! why did he give her that unnerved feeling! What in the world was the matter with her! She felt as if she only waited to hide her face in the cushion. He seemed to understand, for he turned his eyes away, and, leaning forward, softly kissed her hand. “It would be difficult, little woman—you were made for love, and I—well, I somehow seem to just worship you, and that’s all about it.”
Once more she tried to rally herself, pressing her hands to her eyes as if to shut out everything that distracted her from her one purpose.
“It is no use,” resolutely. “Of course, I understand you have a certain power when you like, and that you are so confident because sooner or later you have always won. But that is just what fortifies me now. I don’t want to go into the old arguments. I want you to understand once for all that I am fortified, and I do mean what I say, and not all the loneliness in the world will change me. It is no use talking as you do, and hoping as you do, because there are barriers which neither of us could move, even if we were both agreed. Be sensible and be kind. It would be kind to leave me alone in future, and sensible to be content that you have, to a certain extent, broken down my hate.”
“Content!—content!” and there was a low, vibrating passion in his voice that stirred her to her depths. “Content to give in when I have come within sight of my goal! Content to lose my wife for a whim—a prejudice—a quixotic idea of righting a wrong that, has long since been wiped out in the most satisfactory way in the world! Do you hear, Paddy?—my wife?—no, by God, because I choose to think of you like that now, I will not be content and I will not give in.”