‘I startled you—I know I did. Didn’t you hear that I had come and waited on Monday—waited and waited in vain? I do not know what you can have thought of me, Joyce. I should have come back months ago.’
She said nothing, and he thought he understood why, and it made him feel more deeply guilty than ever.
‘Some time when we are at our ease I will tell you everything and why I did not come; but now I am here, and I want your answer, Joyce, the answer you would not give me that summer evening. Don’t turn your head away. You have scarcely spoken to me to-night. Don’t punish me so for my delay. If I have been long of coming, it was not altogether my fault. And now that I am here, and we are together——’
‘I know,’ she said, ‘why you have not come back, Captain Bellendean; and your staying away was right, quite right, but not your coming. I heard of it, and I approved’—she made a little pause, and added fervently, using all her breath to say it—‘with all my heart!’
‘What do you mean?’ he cried. ‘Joyce, you are vexed and angry: perhaps you have reason; but not, not as you seem to think. How did you hear of it? and what did you hear?’
‘Captain Bellendean,’ she said again, ‘we have two different ways in this world. If I were to say what would please you, I would be mansworn. And even with that it might not please you long. And for you to speak as you are doing may be true; but it’s not well for either you or me.’
‘Joyce,’ he cried, ‘it is not natural to speak to me like that. Have you no feeling for me? Is it all a dream that has been passing in the summer, on the river, in the garden, the hours we have been together,—all that time was it nothing, did it mean nothing? It did to me. I ceased to think of anything but you—you swept away everything else, every other thought. If we had not been interrupted that day—would you have answered me as you are answering me now?’
She said nothing to this; and it was hard upon Joyce that while this momentous conversation was going on her arm was linked in his, she was close to him, her figure lost in his shadow, and all her resolution unable to keep from him the sensation of the heavy beating of her heart.
‘You must have felt something for me then?’ he said. ‘It is dark now and I cannot see you; but I saw your face then: Joyce, don’t be hard upon me. I have taken a long time to think, for there were many things involved, but here I am; and if I’ve been long of coming, it shows the more the force that’s brought me. Joyce, if you had not been the only woman for me I should not have been here.’
‘It is a mistake,’ she said—‘it is a mistake,’ scarcely able to command her voice; ‘there is another woman. And there is—another man! Oh, hold your peace, Captain Bellendean! you and me, we have nothing to do with each other. You would repent it all your life long. And I would be mansworn.’