"I can, perhaps, do nothing alone, but we, we can do everything.
"Marry me, Poppea. I love you wholly, finally, and have ever since the night when I first met you, also on painful ground. But together we will put away the pain, and you shall trample on those harpies that have stuck their claws in you. As Bradish Winslow's wife your word will be law, your position in society unassailable, and my cousin Hortense in particular will come grovelling to you by to-morrow, afraid of what she thinks you may know of her.
"Come to me, child, and let me protect you once for all!"
Poppea dragged herself slowly to her feet until her face was on a level with his, her eyes still fastened upon him, but the dulness was gone, and they blazed with a wild fury akin to delirium, and the color in her cheeks outdid the rouge that had not been wiped away.
"There is no one among them all to compare with you!" he whispered, his voice turning hoarse; so moved was he by her wistful beauty that it became a pain.
She did not seem to hear the last words; her anger blazed out and cooled, and her motions were like those of a somnambulist. She put her hand to her head as though listening for something that she had forgotten but yet expected, but the Knight of the Grail and his music had deserted her.
"Yes, I will marry you," she said in steady, monotonous voice, wholly lacking in emotion.
"Come then, we will go in and announce it to our hostess before the trio may guess the good—that they have done," and he leaned forward to clasp her to him, but as she shrank back, one arm before her face, still as some one who walks in a dream and wards off danger, he merely drew her hand through his arm, still grasping it.
"Not to-night, to-morrow! please let me go home!" and at that moment a man-servant came up to say that Miss Felton's carriage and maid were waiting for Miss Gilbert.