His violence frightened her, and she shivered a little. He saw it, and, with one of his swift changes, became suddenly penitent.
“There—I didn’t mean to frighten you. You look quite bewildered, and so pale. I am a brute. Poor little woman. Don’t take any notice—don’t remember anything except that I won’t give in, because I know you are not as indifferent to me as you pretend, and also because you are lonely and forlorn.” His voice grew entrancingly gentle, “Patricia the Brave, Patricia the Independent, left out in the cold, and no one to realise that she feels it except the Mourne Lodge Bear. Mavourneen—mavourneen—bears have understanding when they love as I love you.”
Big tears gathered in her eyes and splashed down unheeded on her hands. He leaned nearer, and a tremor passed through her. When he spoke in that enthralling, wholly gentle cadence, it was as though her thoughts and faculties became numb. It was as though solid ground were slipping away beneath her feet—branches breaking to which she was clinging for safety. She could only clutch with a spasmodic grasp at the grim spectre of her old resolve. She hid her face in her hands, staggered at the growing feebleness of her own resistance.
“Paddy—dear little girl—my arms are still aching—come.”
She sprang up, white and trembling.
“Oh, Lawrence, please stop—I am not quite myself to-day. Let us go and look for the others.”
He hesitated a moment, then said:
“They don’t want us, and you look too tired to walk. I expect you’ve been lying awake instead of going to sleep the last two or three nights, worrying about future plans. Perhaps it isn’t quite fair to press you any more now. Anyhow, I’ve had more to-day than ever before, and I feel I can afford to wait. If I don’t say any more about the future, dear, will you just sit quietly there and rest until tea-time? See, I’ll give you two more days to get thoroughly readjusted to the new order of events, then I shall come to the Parsonage and claim you. Will you agree to stay here quietly, Paddy, if I promise not to worry you?”
She murmured an assent.
“That’s a sensible little woman. I’ll clean my gun—do you see? I like doing it myself occasionally, and I’ve often thought how I’d love to do those sorts of things in here with you—I fiddling round with my hobbies and you sitting there—no need to say anything, but just to see your skirts, and your little feet, and your hair, and feel in every breath of me, not only that you are there, but that you belong there.” He moved away. “I suppose we’re all family men at heart, directly we pass the frivolous stage and have wearied of banal excitements. I never meant to be anything but a bachelor, but now I want a home and a fireside that is the real thing the same as all the rest of them. I want you—belonging there.