At last she recovered herself and sat up.
"It was some bad news," she said, looking at him piteously, and holding out her hand again. "It is too bad of me to greet you like this."
He took her hand, and his own self-control broke down. He raised it to his lips with a stifled cry.
"Don't!--don't!" said Diana, helplessly. "Indeed--there is nothing the matter--I am only foolish. It is so--so good of you to care." She drew her hand from his, raised it to her brow, and, drawing a long breath, pushed back the hair from her face. She was like a person struggling against some torturing restraint, not knowing where to turn for help.
But at the word "care" he pulled himself together. He sat down beside her, and plunged straight into his declaration. He went at it with the same resolute simplicity that he was accustomed to throw into his military duty, nor could she stop him in the least. His unalterable affection; his changed and improved prospects; a staff appointment at home if she accepted him; the Nigerian post if she refused him--these things he put before her in the natural manly speech of a young Englishman sorely in love, yet quite incapable of "high flights," It was very evident that he had pondered what he was to say through the days and nights of his exile; that he was doing precisely what he had always planned to do, and with his whole heart in the business. She tried once or twice to interrupt him, but he did not mean to be interrupted, and she was forced to hear it out.
At the end she gave a little gasp.
"Oh, Hugh!" His name, given him for the first time, fell so forlornly--it was such a breathing out of trouble and pity and despair--that his heart took another and a final plunge downward. He had known all through that there was no hope for him; this tone, this aspect settled it. But she stretched out her hands to him, tenderly--appealing. "Hugh--I shall have to tell you--but I am ashamed."
He looked at her in silence a moment, then asked her why. The tears rose brimming in her eyes--her hands still in his.