“I’m in time, then?” he said, when he had shaken hands. “In time? In time for what?”
“In time to see you before you go.”
“Oh, yes.” Jean spoke lightly. “You’re in time for that. But who told you I was going away? I didn’t know you were in England, even.”
“I came back a fortnight ago—to London. Judith wired me from home that you were leaving Coombe Eavie.”
“I don’t see the necessity for her wiring you,” remarked Jean a little coldly. “There was no need for you to see me.”
“There was—every need.”
She glanced at him keenly, detecting a new note in his voice, an unexpected gravity and restraint.
“Every need,” he repeated. He paused, then went on quickly, with a nervousness that was foreign to him. “Jean, I know everything that has happened—that your engagement to Tormarin is at an end—and I have come to ask you if you will be my wife. No—hear me out!”—as she would have interrupted him. “I’m not asking you now as—as I did before. If you will marry me, I swear I will ask for nothing that you are not willing to give. I’m making no demands. I’ve learned now”—with a faint weary smile—“that you cannot force love. It can only be given. And I want nothing but just the right to take care of you, to shield you—to keep the sharp corners of life away from you.” Then, as he read her incredulous face, he went on gravely: “If I had wanted more than that, Jean, if I had not learned something—just from loving you, I should not have waited until now. I should have come at once—as soon as I learned from Madame de Varigny that Tormarin’s wife was still alive.”
She looked at him curiously.
“Why didn’t you come then, Geoffrey? I sometimes wondered—you being you!”—with a faint smile. “Because, of course, I knew why you had rushed off to France. Madame de Varigny explained that.”