“But, Mr. Basset——”
But he would not let her speak. “That was his message,” he continued, “and I am glad to be the messenger because it gives me a chance of speaking to you. Will you sit down?”
“But we have only just parted,” she remonstrated, struggling against her fate. “I don’t understand what you want——”
“To say? No, I am going to explain it—if you will sit down.”
She sat down then with the feeling that she was trapped. And since it was clear that she must go through with it, she was glad that his insistence hardened her heart and dried up the springs of pity.
He went to the fire, stooped and moved the wood. “You won’t come nearer?” he said.
“No,” she replied. How foolish to trap her like this if he thought to get anything from her!
He turned to her and his face was changed. Under his wistful look she discovered that it was not so easy to be hard, not so easy to maintain her firmness. “You would rather escape?” he said, reading her mind. “I know. But I can’t let you escape. You are thinking that I have trapped you? And you are fearing that I am going to make you unhappy for—for half an hour perhaps? I know. And I am fearing that you are going to make me unhappy for—always.”
No, she could not retain her hardness. She knew that she was going to feel pity after all. But she would not speak.
“I have only hope,” he went on. “There is only one thing I am clinging to. I have read that when a man loves a woman very truly, very deeply, as I love you, Mary”—she started violently, and blushed to the roots of her hair, so sudden was the avowal—“as I love you,” he repeated sorrowfully, “I have read that she either hates him or loves him. His love is a fire that either warms her or scorches her, draws her or repels her. I thought of that last night, as I thought of many things, and I was sure, I was confident that you did not hate me.”