“And now Sibyl,” I went on—“remember,—there must be [p 206] no more talk of money and bargaining. Tell me what you have not yet told me,—that you love me,—and would love me even if I were poor.”
She looked up, straightly and unflinchingly full into my eyes.
“I cannot tell you that,”—she said,—“I have told you I do not believe in love; and if you were poor I certainly should not marry you. It would be no use!”
“You are frank, Sibyl!”
“It is best to be frank, is it not?” and she drew a flower from the knot at her bosom, and began fastening it in my coat—“Geoffrey what is the good of pretence? You would hate to be poor, and so should I. I do not understand the verb ‘to love,’—now and then when I read a book by Mavis Clare, I believe love may exist, but when I close the book my belief is shut up with it. So do not ask for what is not in me. I am willing—even glad to marry you; that is all you must expect.”
“All!” I exclaimed, with a sudden mingling of love and wrath in my blood, as I closed my arms about her and kissed her passionately—“All!—you impassive ice-flower, it is not all!—you shall melt to my touch and learn what love is,—do not think you can escape its influence, you dear, foolish, beautiful child! Your passions are asleep,—they must wake!”
“For you?” she queried, resting her head back against my shoulder, and gazing up at me with a dreamy radiance in her lovely eyes.
“For me!”
She laughed.
“‘Oh bid me love, and I will love!’”—she hummed softly under her breath.