'Oh, stay there!' a voice said close to her ear. 'Rest there—pale tired child—pale tired little child!'
That moment seemed to last an eternity. He held her close, cherishing and protecting her from the cold—not kissing her—till at length she looked up with bright eyes, shining through happy tears.
'Are you sure at last?' she said, strangely enough, speaking out of the far depths of her own thought to his.
'Sure!' he said, his expression changing. 'What can I be sure of? I am sure that I am not worth your loving, sure that I am poor, insignificant, obscure, that if you give yourself to me you will be miserably throwing yourself away!'
She looked at him, still smiling, a white sorceress weaving spells about him in the darkness. He drew her lightly gloved hand through his arm, holding the fragile fingers close in his, and they moved on.
'Do you know,' he repeated—a tone of intense melancholy replacing the tone of passion,—'how little I have to give you?'
'I know,' she answered, her face turned shyly away from him, her words coming from under the fur hood which had fallen forward a little. 'I know that—that—you are not rich, that you distrust yourself, that——'
'Oh, hush,' he said, and his voice was full of pain. 'You know so little; let me paint myself. I have lived alone, for myself, in myself, till sometimes there seems to be hardly anything left in me to love or be loved; nothing but a brain, a machine that exists only for certain selfish ends. My habits are the tyrants of years; and at Murewell, though I loved you there, they were strong enough to carry me away from you. There is something paralysing in me, which is always forbidding me to feel, to will. Sometimes I think it is an actual physical disability—the horror that is in me of change, of movement, of effort. Can you bear with me? Can you be poor? Can you live a life of monotony? Oh, impossible!' he broke out, almost putting her hand away from him. 'You, who ought to be a queen of this world, for whom everything bright and brilliant is waiting if you will but stretch out your hand to it. It is a crime—an infamy—that I should be speaking to you like this!'
Rose raised her head. A passing light shone upon her. She was trembling and pale again, but her eyes were unchanged.
'No, no,' she said wistfully; 'not if you love me.'