“But you must not go! Hear me, I beg! Good God, only a half hour left!”
“A half hour?” repeated Elizabeth, inquiringly.
“I mean,” said Peyton, recovering his wits, “a half hour till the troops may be here for me,—only a half hour until I must leave your house forever! Do not let me be deprived of the sight of you for those last minutes! Tis so short a time, yet ’tis all my life!”
“The man is mad, I think!” She spoke as if to herself.
“Mad!” he echoed. “Yes, some do call it a madness—the love that’s born of a glance, and lasts till death!”
“Love!” said she. “’Tis impossible you should come to love me, in so short a time.”
“’Tis born of a glance, I tell you!” he cried. “What is it, if not love, that makes me forget my 148 coming death, see only you, hear only you, think of only you? Why do I not spend this time, this last hour, in pleading for my life, in begging you to hide me and send the troops away without me when they come? They would take your word, and you are a woman, and women are moved by pleading. Why, then, do I not, in the brief time I have left, beg for my life? Because my passion blinds me to all else, because I would use every moment in pouring out my heart to you, because my feelings must have outlet in words, because it is more than life or death to me that you should know I love you!—God, how fast that clock goes!”
She had stood in wonderment, under the spell of his vehemence. Now, as he leaned towards her, over the chair-back, his breath coming rapidly, his eyes luminous, she seemed for a moment abashed, softened, subdued. But she put to flight his momentary hope by starting again for the doorway, with a low-spoken, “I must go!”
But he thrust his chair in her way.
“Nay, don’t go!” he said. “You may hear my avowal with propriety. My people are as good as any in Virginia.”