“Why didn’t you come?” he said, with a quick breath.
Her lips moved as though she were about to speak, and then stopped.
“You were not serious, that was not the true reason—what you said about marriage,” he said tumultuously.
She disengaged herself from his arms and raised her eyes to his face, furrowed with the sleepless pain which she had drawn across it. She looked at him thus, a long wait, her lip wavering. Then she said, without averting her eyes:
“Must it be so? You still insist?”
His answer was a cry, inarticulate, wrung from him despite his effort at control, at finding her still unreconciled.
“Wait,” she said hastily. She looked away from him and then down and about her forehead and the slender lips the lines drew in hardness. “I can’t; I cannot see you suffer. I know that—that is all I know!” she said desperately, and she flung back her head as though flinging sudden tears from her eyes.
“Inga!” he burst out, but she stopped him quietly, her fingers over his lips.
“I will do as you wish,” she said firmly, “on one condition.” She seemed to be thinking a moment, and all at once she continued rapidly. “You are an honorable man—I know that—I knew that last night—you will do what you say you will do. Look at me, Mr. Dan; promise me on your honor, that whenever I come to you and ask you—you will give me back my liberty, that you will set me free.”
“Whenever?” he said slowly, staring at her.