He listened, praying for the kitchen to engulf her.
When she withdrew at last, with an apology for leaving him, he rose, and went to the girl's side.
"Do you know why I came this afternoon?" he said.
She did know—had known it in the moment that he opened the window for her:
"To say 'good-bye,'" she murmured.
"I came to beg you not to go! Dearest, what do you relinquish by marrying me now? Not the stage—your hope of the stage is over; not your ambition in itself—you can be ambitious as my wife. You lose nothing, and you give—a heaven. Mamie, won't you stay?"
She leant on the mantelpiece without speaking. In the pause, Mrs. Baines' voice reached them distinctly, as she said, "Put the brawn on a smaller dish."
"You are forgetting. There was ... a reason besides the stage."
"It is you who've forgotten. I told you I would be content.... It wouldn't be repugnant to you?"
"To refuse while I thought I had a future, and to say 'yes,' now that——How can you ask me? It would be an insult to your love."