She broke away from him, panting, breathlessly:
"I cannot answer you now."
She fled to her dressing-room, glad to escape his importunities, yet feeling as if she did not do him justice by her lack of love.
"He is so patient, so tender, and so eager to spare me pain, that I ought to love him more than I do," she told herself.
Respect and esteem she could give him, for she believed that he was good and noble, so well had he acted the traitor's part; but love—oh, we cannot give love at will!
"Life's perfect June, Love's red, red rose,
Have burned and bloomed for me.
Though still youth's summer sunlight glows;
Though thou art kind, dear friend, I find
I have no heart for thee."
She stole to the wings one moment, to gaze by stealth at the theatre party, and by the merest accident Harry Hawthorne was leaning over the bride's chair, talking to her of some trifle, but the sight made Geraldine draw back all white and quivering, with a cruel pang at her heart.
"I hate him!" she moaned, to herself, in a passion of jealous despair.
But when she came upon the stage she did not look again at the box, or she would have seen that Harry Hawthorne sat apart from Daisy, by the side of Cissy. She acted her part well, for in it there was much of the tragic pain that suited well with her desperate mood.