This time he did not answer, but his half averted face showed me a profile severe, resolute, and inexorable.
"You cannot weary me," I said again; "will you stay?"
He turned upon me pale with wrath.
"Oh! blind girl—blind to the last!" he cried, his white lips trembling.
"You ask me to stay—to stay!"
"Yes, Cornelius, again and again!"
All patience seemed to forsake him. His eyes lit, his features quivered; he grasped my hands in his with an angry force, of which he was himself unconscious.
"Come," he said, striving to be calm, "do not make me say that which I should repent. Let us part as it is—do not insist—do not provoke me to forget honour and truth."
I could see that Cornelius was angry with me; that my obstinacy provoked him beyond measure; but his wrath was the wrath of love; it could not terrify me. I even felt and found in it a perilous pleasure, that made me smile as I replied:
"But I do insist, Cornelius."
His lips parted, as if to utter some vehement reply; then he bit them with angry force, and knit his brow like one who subdues and keeps down some inward strife. Kate quietly stepped up to us.