She sank gracefully back into her easy-chair, the gas-light streaming over her dusk, Canadian loveliness. She made an effort to disengage her hand, which he still held fast, but he refused to let it go.
"No, Norine! let me keep it. Oh, love, remember it was once all mine. Norine! Norine! on my knees I implore your forgiveness for the past!"
He actually sank on one knee before her, covering the hand he held with passionate kisses. No acting here; that was plain, at least. The infatuated man meant every word he said.
"Forgive me, Norine! I know that I have sinned to you beyond all pardon, but if you knew how I have suffered, how the memory of my crime has made my whole life miserable, how, to drown the torture of memory, I fled to the wine-cup and the gambling-table, and to—"
"Marriage with Miss Helen Holmes, heiress and belle. Oh, I know it all, Mr. Thorndyke. Pray get up. Gentlemen never go on their knees nowadays except in melodrama. Get up Mr. Thorndyke; let go my hand and sit down like a rational being. I insist upon it."
"A rational being!" he repeated. "I have ceased to be that since your return. It is my madness, Norine, to love you as I never loved any women before in my life."
She laughed, toying with the fan she held.
"My dear Mr. Thorndyke, I remember perfectly well what an absolute fool I was in the days of our acquaintanceship four years ago. Even such a statement as that might have been swallowed whole. But it is four years ago, and—you will pardon me—I know what brilliant talent Laurence Thorndyke has for graceful fiction. To how many ladies in the course of his thirty years of life has he made that ardent declaration, I wonder?"
"You do not believe me?"
"I do not."