"You won't?" cries St. John, mistaking the cause of her silence, in a voice in which extreme surprise and profound alarm and pain are mixed in equal quantities.
Still no answer.
"If you have been making a fool of me all this time, you might, at least, have the civility to tell me so," he says, in a voice so sternly cold that remorse, coyness, and all other feelings merge into womanish fear.
"Don't blame me before I deserve it," she says, with a faint smile. "I will mar——"
She finishes her sentence on his breast.
Perfect happiness never lasts more than two seconds in this world; at the end of that time St. John's doubts return. He puts her a little way from him, that she may be a freer agent. "Esther," he says, "I half believe that you said 'yes' out of sheer fright; you thought I was going to upbraid you; and I am aware" (with a half smile) "that there are few things you would not do or leave undone to avoid a scolding; you did not say it readily, as if you were glad of it. I know that you have only known me three weeks, that I am not particularly likeable, especially by women, and that I always show to the worst possible advantage at home. All I beg of you is, tell me the truth: Do you like me, or do you not?"
"I do like you."
"Like is such a comprehensive word," he says, with a slight, impatient contracting of his straight brows. "You like Mrs. Brown, I suppose, for washing your clothes?"
"I like you better than Mrs. Brown."
"I did not doubt that," he answers, laughing; "probably you like me better than Sir Thomas, than my mother, than Constance, perhaps; but such liking as that I would not stoop to pick off the ground. I must be first or nowhere. Am I first?"