'But—she—wants me!' she falters.
'And do not I want you?' asks he, unconsciously emphasising his pressure on her wrist. 'Dare you look me in the face, and tell me that I do not want you? You are a truthful woman—too truthful by half, I thought, the first time I met you. Look me in the eyes if you dare, and tell me that you believe I do not want you.'
She does what he tells her—at least half of it. She looks him penetratingly full in the eyes. If the least grain of falsity lurk in either of his, that clear and solemn gaze of hers must seek it out.
'If you do want me,' she says slowly, and with a trembling lip, 'it has come lately to you.'
'Lately!' echoes he, his voice growing lower as the tide of his passion sweeps higher. 'What do you call lately? I wanted you the first moment I saw you; was not that soon enough? How much sooner would you have had it? The first moment I saw you—do you recollect it? when you were so angry at being sent in to dinner with me that you would not be commonly civil to me; that you turned your back upon me, and insulted me as well as you knew how—I wanted you then. I have wanted you ever since—every hour of every day and every night; and I want you—God knows whether I want you—now!'
Prue's callings have ceased; the small laughters, exclamations, appeals, have died into silence. Her and Freddy's pretty heads have both disappeared. Talbot and Peggy are left the last upon the tower-top. Her lip trembles.
'You did not want me last autumn, and you have not seen me since.'
'No, worse luck!' cries he passionately; 'but you need not throw that in my teeth. You might pity me for it, I think. Eight whole months gone, Peggy—wasted, lost out of our short lives! But how dare you stand there and say that I have not wanted you, do not want you, autumn, winter, summer, spring? You are confusing, perhaps, between yourself and me. You do not want me, that is likely enough. You could not even pretend to have been giving me one poor thought when I asked you. You would have been glad—I saw by your face that your kind heart would have been glad—if you could have told me, with any semblance of truth, that you had been thinking of me; but you had not. I was miles away from you.'
Her lip is trembling again, and her chest heaving. She has not had many love-tales told her; not many more perhaps, or of much better quality, than those with which Lady Betty had spitefully credited her. She has let her eyes fall, because she feels them to be filling up with foolish drops; but now lifts them again, and they look with their old directness, though each has a tear in it, into his.
'Why did you go away?'