"Indeed, if you have been cultivating a wrong impression—I can only advise you to forget it. I have liked you;" her voice sank to the lowest whisper—"very much; I have been so stupid as to let you see it; but I never meant you to—to—presume upon it in this uncomfortable manner."
"One question!" he urged. "Only one. Is it that you have played with me, loving another?"
Her right hand was on the keys of the piano, striking chords continually; a false note grating now and then on the ear. Her left hand lay passive on her lap, as she sat, slightly turned to him.
"Stuff and nonsense! No, I have not. You will have them overhear you, Harry."
"Do not equivocate—dearest Georgina—let me hear the truth. It may be better for me; I can bear anything rather than deceit. Let me know the truth; I beseech it of you by all the hours we have passed together."
"Harry, you are decidedly beside yourself to-night. Don't suffer the world behind to get a notion of it."
"You are playing with me now," he said, quite a wail in his low voice. "Let me, one way or the other, be at rest. I never shall bear this suspense, and live. Give me an answer, Georgina; one that shall abide for ever."
"An answer to what?"
"Have you all this while loved another?"
She took her hand off the keys, and began picking out the treble notes of a song with her forefinger, bending her head slightly.