“Dick, listen to me. I want you to do me a favour.”
“If there is any single thing in the whole world I could do for you——”
“You would do it, I know, however great it was. But it is a number of little things, Dick. I know you don’t mean to hurt me, but you often do. Think a moment. I don’t love you any more because of your Victoria Cross, but it makes me glad and proud to think that you have it. I know I can’t expect you to be glad that I am a doctor, and proud of being one, because you dislike the very idea; but I want you to treat the subject tenderly, because it is connected with me. I daresay it seems very strange to you that I should be as sensitive about my profession as you are about yours, and I know you will never look at the two things in the same light, but I ask you to regard it as a concession to my weakness when you let an opportunity pass without a sneer. We must agree to differ on this question, I suppose, but I want you to do it gracefully, for my sake.” There were tears in her eyes as she looked at him, and Dick felt the enormity of his conduct more keenly than he had ever done in the days when he delighted to provoke her to arguments and the delivery of lectures.
“What a brute I must have been, that you should find it necessary to ask such a thing of me!” he burst out. “It makes me feel thoroughly ashamed to think what a cad I am. Do you think that it’s safe to have anything to do with me, Georgie?”
“I don’t know whether it’s safe or not, but I love you so much that I couldn’t do without you,” said Georgia, unsteadily.
“To hear you say that makes me feel that I could do anything you asked me. Help me to be more worthy of you, Georgie. If I hurt your feelings after this I deserve to be hung. Pull me up—simply slang me—if I say anything unkind. I never thought I was such a blackguard. No, only look at me, as you did just now, and if I don’t wilt, as Hicks puts it, that instant, then throw me over, for I shan’t be worth troubling about. I will get over that habit of letting out at the things you care for. I feel as though I could go anywhere and do anything to-day.”
“And I feel so ridiculously safe,” said Georgia, smiling at him with an April face.
“And yet nothing is really different from what it was yesterday.”
“Oh, Dick! everything is different. There is hope to-day, and there was none then. Think how dreadful it would have been to be killed when everything was wrong between us.”
“What a remark!” said Dick, lazily—“it’s almost worthy of young Anstruther; and how particularly cheerful the subjects of your thoughts are! Now that I am in a position to keep you from making rash expeditions to the Palace, I must say that I don’t see any present danger of your being killed.”