This blankness lasted a certain number of seconds. Then it passed away, and he painfully recovered his identity. But the experience was not new to him—it would recur—let him be quick.
This time a happier instinct served him. He, too, rose and went up to her.
'We are a pair of fools,' he said to her, half bitterly, half gently; 'we reproach and revile each other, and all the time I am come to give you not only what is yours, but all—all I have—that it may stand between you and—and worse ruin.'
'Ruin!' she said, throwing back her head and catching at the word; 'speak for yourself! If I am Montjoie's mistress, Elise Delaunay was yours. Don't preach. It won't go down.'
'I have no intention of preaching—don't alarm yourself,' he replied quietly, this time controlling himself without difficulty.'
'I have only this to say. On the day when you become Montjoie's wife, all our father's money—all the six hundred pounds Mr. Gurney paid over to me in January, shall be paid to you.'
She started, caught her breath, tried to brazen it out.
'What is this idiocy for?' she asked coldly. 'What does marrying matter to you?'
He sank down again on the chair by the stove, being, indeed, unable to stand.
'Perhaps I can't tell you,' he said, after a pause, shading his face from her with his hand; 'perhaps I could not make plain to myself what I feel. But this I know—that this man with whom you are living here is a man for whom nobody has a good word. I want to give you a hold over him. But first—stop a moment, '—he dropped his hand and looked up eagerly, 'will you leave him—leave him at once? I could arrange that.'