Geoffrey had pleaded in vain. He had won his sweetheart's promise; but his sweetheart was not to be treated in too masterful a fashion.
"God knows why we are waiting, or what we are waiting for," he said, in one of those fits of nervous irritability, which even Suzette's influence could not prevent. "Hasn't my probation been long enough? Haven't I suffered enough? Haven't you kept me on the rack of uncertainty long enough to satisfy your love of power? You are like all women; you think of a lover as a surgeon thinks of a rabbit, too low in the scale for his feelings to be considered—just good enough for vivisection."
"Can't we be happy, Geoffrey? We have everything in the world that we care for."
"I can never be happy till I am sure of you. I am always dreading the moment in which you will tell me you have changed your mind."
"I have given you my promise. Isn't that enough?"
"No, it is not enough. You gave Allan your promise—and broke it."
She started up from her seat by the piano, and turned upon him indignantly.
"If you are capable of saying such things as that, we had better bid each other good-bye at once," she said. "I won't submit to be reminded of my wrong-doing by you, who are the sole cause of it. If I had never seen you, I should be Allan's wife this day. You came between us; you tempted me away from him; and now you tell me I am fickle and untrustworthy. I begin to think I have made a worse mistake in promising to be your wife than I made when I engaged myself to Allan."
"That means that you are regretting him—that you wish he were here now—in my place."
"Not in your place; but I wish he were safe in England. It makes me miserable to be so uncertain of his fate, for his mother's sake."