"Oh, don't stand repeating my name like that! It would be more dignified if you get angry. But nothing can make any difference. You might spend the rest of your life and mine on your knees to me, but I cannot marry you—cannot! Do you understand, Mr. Armstrong? It is all over, this love-story of ours, and all we have to do now is to forget it!"
Through all the hysterical excitement of her talk there rang a note of despair which Lorin failed not to recognise and for which he was greatly at a loss to account.
"Lina," he said, again, "you are ill and unstrung; you don't know what you are saying. Something very serious has happened to trouble you to-day. Presently, when you feel better and calmer, you must tell me all about it. But, my darling, it is useless to try and persuade me that you did not love me yesterday or that you do not love me now!"
"I do not!"
"Lina, it is horribly dark and foggy and you don't see very well with those lovely, tearful eyes of yours. But look up now into my face, with your hands in mine—so—and your heart beating near mine, and tell me again that you do not love me!"
She stood still as he directed, and, clasping her hands, he held them up against his breast. Her face was ashen pale and even her lips were white. She strove to keep up the pitch of unnatural nervous excitement to which she had worked herself; but gradually, as he clasped her hands close in his, he felt their tension relax. Her form lost its defiant erectness; she quivered and swayed towards him, and would have fallen had he not caught her in his arms.
"Oh, Lorin, Lorin, I am so unhappy! I think my heart will break!"
Very weak and pitiful her accents sounded now as, like a tired child, she rested her cheek upon his shoulder for a few seconds, weeping bitterly. Lorin asked her no questions and contented himself with gently soothing her. Presently her sobs ceased, and suddenly raising her head, she tried to laugh.
"It's like a servant on her 'Sunday out,' isn't it," she said, with a feeble attempt at cheerfulness, "to meet my 'young man' after church, and walk in Hyde Park, with his arm round my waist, crying? Servants, when they get engaged, always cry a great deal. I remember when our parlour-maid at Norwood got engaged to the baker, she used to shed floods of tears in the pantry, and even weep while waiting at table. She and her young man were perpetually having what she called 'words'—about three times a week it used to happen—and then Emma cried her eyes out until they made it up. And after all she married the postman."
"Well, and, now that we have had our 'words,' darling, and you have had your weeping, and we have made it up, since we are having our 'Sunday evening out' in the Park, and it's so dark one can't see across the road, you must kiss me in sign of reconciliation."