"You mean that I am too impetuous."
"I mean that you are too absurd."
"Is it absurd to love the sweetest woman in the world—the prettiest, the most enchanting? Suzette, I tore back from the Hartz Mountains because I was told you were free—free to marry the man who loves you with all the passion of his soul. When I told you of my love months ago, you were bound to another man, you were obstinately bent upon keeping your promise to him. I had no option but to withdraw, to fight my battle, and try to live without you. I did try, Suzette. I left the ground clear for my rival. I was self-banished from my own home."
"You need not have been banished. I could have kept away from Discombe."
"That would have distressed my mother, whose happiness depends on your society, Suzette. You know how she loves you. To see you my wife will make her very happy. She has taken you to her heart as a daughter."
"Not so much as she has taken Allan Carew to her heart. It was for his sake she liked me. I could see when we parted that it was of Allan she thought; it was for him she was sorry. I don't think she will ever forgive me for making Allan unhappy."
"Not if her only son's happiness is bought with that price? Suzette, why do you keep me at arm's length—now, when there is nothing to part us; now, while I know that you love me?"
"You have no right to say that. If you know it, you know more than I know myself."
"Suzette, Suzette, do you deny your love?"
She was crying, with her hands over her averted face. He tried to draw those hands away, eager to look into her eyes. He would not believe mere words. Only in her eyes could he read the truth.