“No,” he said, laughing. “A dozen women may have been ready to refuse me, but not one ever did.”
“Nor accepted you, either,” she continued, shrewdly.
He arose and began to pace the floor; after some turns of excited movement, he came to her and stood behind her chair. “I know that I have been accepted; I know that I asked when I did not intend to ask—that is—I was carried beyond myself; I asked when I did not know that I was asking.”
“What shall you do now?”
“I shall ask in reality; I shall confess myself in the wrong.”
“And she?”
“And she? She has the tenderest heart in the world. She has forgiven me long ago.”
“Do not trust her eyes and forget her lips,” warned his mother. “Love is slain sometimes.”
He resumed his walk with a less confident air. He had forgotten her lips.
Would Tessa have cared to hear this? Would she have forgotten Felix, his blessing and the quiet of the holy stars?