“So let it be clearly understood,” he says, raising himself into a sitting posture, taking cold possession of both her hands, and plunging his clear eyes deep into her watery ones, “that when I die—pooh! what does a preposition matter?—if I die, then, let it be clearly understood that I wish you to marry—to marry and bear children to people that nursery which we have both heard so much of!”
The light inveterate point of irony pierces, as if against his will, through the last sentence. But for a sob or two, she has listened to his harangue in absolute silence; her painful excitement rising by rushes to the highest possible pitch. Is not now, if ever, the moment to put her question?
“You have said your say,” she begins, her chest heaving as high as it had done during that awful race with Fate along the railway line, seven weeks ago. “And now I have to say mine. I have long had a question to put to you.”
A ripple of uneasiness skims over the exalted calmness of his face.
“Are you sure that it is worth putting?”
“Quite sure.”
“I have long wished to ask you—I must ask you, now, whether on that day——”
“Well?”
“When, after having saved the child, you so unaccountably remained standing, for two or three seconds, right in front of the engine——”