She laughed in an unfriendly way. He pressed her hand to his forehead. "You won't be so cruel, I know."
"You know more than I do."
"Do you realise what it means if you go?" In fancy, he was present, and saw her passed from one pair of arms to another.
"I realise nothing—but that I am very unhappy."
"Have I no influence over you any more—none at all?"
"Can't you come, too, then?—if you are afraid to let me out of your sight?"
"I? To see you——" He broke off with wrathful abruptness. "Thanks, I would rather be shot." But at the mingled anger and blankness of her face, he coloured. "Louise, put an end to all this. Marry me—now, at once!"
"Marry you? I? No, thank you. We're past that stage, I think.—Besides, are you so simple as to believe it would make any difference?"
"Oh, stop tormenting me. Come here!"—and he pulled her to him.
From this day forward, the direction of his thoughts was changed. The incident of Herries's visit, her refusal to promise what he asked, and, above all, the matter of the coming ball, with regard to which he could not get certainty from her: these things seemed to open up nightmare depths, to which he could see no bottom. Compared with them, the vague fears which had hitherto troubled him were only shadows, and like shadows faded away. He no longer sought out superfine reasons for their lack of happiness. The past was dead and gone; he could not alter jot or tittle of what had happened; he could only make the best of it. And so he ceased to brood over it, and gave himself up to the present. The future was a black, unknown quantity, but the present was his own. And he would cling to it—for who knew what the future held in store for him? In these days, he began to suspect that it was not in the nature of things for her always to remain satisfied with him; and, ever more daring, the horrid question reared its head: who will come after me? Another blind attraction only needed to seize her, and what, then, would become of constancy and truth? If he had doubted her before, he was now suspicious from a different cause, and in quite a different way. The face of the trim little man who had sat beside her, and smiled at her, was persistently present to him. He did not question her further; but the poison worked the more surely in secret; he never for an instant forgot; and jealousy, now wide awake, had at last a definite object to lay hold of.