'And you won't forget me, Colin?'
'Forget you, Minna! If ever I forget you, may my right hand forget her cunning—and what more dreadful thing could a sculptor say by way of an imprecation than that, now!'
'Oh, Colin, don't! Don't say so! Suppose it was to come true, you know!'
'But I don't mean to forget you, Minna; so it won't come true. Little woman, I shall think of you always, and have your dear little gipsy face for ever before me. And now, Minna, this time we must really say good-bye. I'm out beyond my time already. Just one more; thank you, darling. Goodbye, good-bye, Minna. Good-bye, dearest. One more. God bless you!'
'Good-bye, Colin. Good-bye, good-bye. Oh, Colin, my heart is breaking.'
And when that night Minna lay awake in her own bare small room at prim Miss Woollacott's, she thought it all over once more, and argued the pros and cons of the whole question deliberately to herself with much trepidation. 'He called me “dearest,” she thought in her sad little mind, 'and he said he'd never forget me; that looks very much as if he really loved me: but, then, he never asked me whether I loved him or not, and he never proposed to me—no, I'm quite sure he never proposed to me. I should have felt so much easier in my own mind if only before he went away he'd properly proposed to me!' And then she covered her head with the bed-clothes once more, and sobbed herself to sleep, to dream of Colin.
The very next evening, Colin was at Paris.