"Miss Evans! NORINE!" Varona tried feebly to free himself. "You mustn't—"
Norine was laughing through her tears. "If you won't speak, I suppose I must, but it is very embarrassing. Don't you suppose I know exactly how much you love me? Why, you've told me a thousand times—"
"Please! PLEASE!" he cried in a shaking voice. "This is wrong. I won't let you—you, a girl with everything—"
"Hush!" She drew him closer. "You're going to tell me that you have nothing, can offer me nothing. You're going to do the generous, noble thing. Well! I hate generous people. I'm selfish, utterly selfish and spoiled, and I don't propose to be robbed of anything I want, least of all my happiness. You do love me, don't you?"
Esteban's cry was eloquent; he clasped his arms about her and she held him fiercely to her breast.
"Well, then, why don't you tell me so? I—I can't keep on proposing. It isn't ladylike."
"We're quite mad, quite insane," he told her after a while. "This only makes it harder to give you up."
"You're not going to give me up and you're not going to die. I sha'n't let you. Think what you have to live for."
"I—did wrong to surrender."
"It was I who surrendered. Come! Must I say it all? Aren't you going to ask me—"