"To Germany! Why do you want to go there?"
"Because I do not want to vegetate here."
"Nora, you will hate it. You will be ill with home-sickness. You don't know what it will be like. It is not as though you will be among your own country-people. You will hate their manners, their customs, their ways, and they will treat you like a servant. Little Nora, I can't bear the thought of it."
He spoke earnestly, almost incoherently.
Nora shook her head.
"There is no other alternative," she said.
"There is one other alternative, Nora. Will you be my wife?"
He had taken her hand, and she did not attempt to draw it back. Nor had she changed colour. Her clear eyes studied his thin, rather gaunt face, and passed on with frank criticism to his tall figure, loosely built and rather stooping, in the grey Norfolk suit.
"Nora," he said sternly, "I have asked you a question. You do not need to look at me like that. I am not different to what I usually am."
"But I am looking at you in a different light," she said.