After a moment's consideration she saw him close this miniature, folding its little doors together.
"That, because I want to ask a favour of you," he said.
"What is it?" she asked, and blushed beautifully.
"You gave me a kiss, let me also bestow one—one parting kiss—and I will go."
He was about to go then, he meant to consider himself dismissed. She could not speak, and he came up to her, she gave him her hand, and he stooped and kissed her.
Something in her eyes, or perhaps the blush on her face, encouraged him to take her for a moment into his arms. He was extremely pale, but when she lifted her face from his breast a strange gleam of hope and wonder flashed out of his eyes.
She had never looked so lovely in her life, her face suffused with a soft carnation, her lucid grey-blue eyes full of sweet entreaty. Nevertheless, she spoke in a tone of the quietest indifference—a sort of pensive wistfulness habitual with her.
"You can go if you please," she said, "but you had much better not."
"No!" he exclaimed.
"No," she repeated. "Because, John—because I love you."