"Nothing, nothing. Promise me that you will be happy. For if you were not happy I should be heart-broken."
"What should hinder my being happy; I love Frank so dearly?" she exclaimed, though still fearing lest she should hurt his feelings.
"Yes; and so long as you are happy all is well," he murmured low, still rubbing his hands.
Then, on a sudden, while her inquiring gaze still rested on his face, he said: "Poor child!"
"What—why poor child?" she asked in dismay.
He seized her hands, his tears dropped on her fingers.
"Oh Eva, Eva! God, who can read my heart—If you—oh! I feel such pity, such great, passionate pity for you. I would do I know not what—I would give my life if I—if you.... Poor, poor child!"
She was standing up now, trembling, and as pale as death; her fingers clutched the table-cover, which slipped as she pulled it, and a glass vase, in which a few flowers were fading, was upset; the water trickled over the velvet cloth in great silvery beads. She let it flow into pools, staring at it with wide, terrified eyes, while he covered his face with his hands.
"Bertie," she cried, "oh, Bertie! Why do you speak thus? What is it all? Tell me. Tell me everything. I must know. I desire you to speak out."
His reply was a gesture—a perfectly natural gesture of deprecation, with no touch of theatrical insincerity, a gesture as though he would retract his words, and had said something he should have kept to himself; then he, too, rose, and his face had changed; its expression was no longer one of suffering or of pity, but of cool decision.