"Upon my soul, mother, that is too good a joke! Is my mother, the most romantic and unconventional of women, preaching the eighteenpenny gospel of middle-class etiquette?"
"It is no question of conventionality. My affection for Allan is only second to my love for you, and I cannot bear to think of his being wounded and humiliated, as he must be if Suzette were to accept you directly after having jilted him."
"And you would have Suzette sit beside the tomb of Allan's hopes for a year or so while I eat my heart out—banquet on joys deferred—sicken and die, perhaps, with that slow torture of waiting. Mother, you don't know what love is—love in the heart of a man. If she had married Allan, I should have shot myself on her wedding-day. That was written in my book of fate. If she won't marry me; if she play fast and loose, blow hot, blow cold; if she won't look in my eyes and say honestly, 'I love you,' and 'I am yours,' I can't answer for myself—I fear there will be a tragedy. You know there is something here"—touching his forehead—"which loses itself in a whirl of fiery confusion when this"—touching his heart—"is too sorely tried."
"Geoffrey, my dearest! oh, Geoffrey, you agonize me when you talk like that! I think—yes, I believe that Suzette loves you; but she is sensitive, tender-hearted—all that is womanly and good. You must give her time to recover from the shock of parting with Allan, whom she sincerely esteems, and whose sorrow is her sorrow."
"I will see her to-morrow. I cannot live without seeing her. Why, every mile of pine-forest through which I came seemed three, every mile of dusty Belgian flatness seemed seven, to my hot impatience. I must see her, hear her, hold her hand in mine; and she shall do what she likes with the poor rag of life which will be left when I have lived an hour with her."
END OF VOL. II.
LONDON: PRINTED BY WILLIAM CLOWES AND SONS, LIMITED,
STAMFORD STREET AND CHARING CROSS.
[Transcriber's Note: Inconsistent hyphens left as printed.]