“Your magic is thoroughly successful, at any rate. Lady Haigh will testify to the change in my demeanour since you came in. Well, Georgie, you have won. Let’s make it up. I surrender at discretion.”
“I begin to think that you are delirious again,” said Georgia, in a puzzled voice, bending forward to look at him.
“I think not. I am merely anxious not to do things by halves. Come, impose your conditions on me while I am in this softened state. As an honourable man, I shall feel bound to carry them out when I return to my right mind. I will only ask you, as you are strong, to be merciful. There, could submission go further than that?”
“You are certainly not fit to be sitting up. I shall call your bearer, and request him to see you back to bed. You may not be delirious, but you are undoubtedly queer in the head.”
“Thank you. You will not call the respectable Hari Das at present—at any rate until I have had a longer talk with you.”
“That sounds more like your usual self,” said Georgia.
“The self which is to vanish from henceforth. Oh, Georgie, I know I’m talking like a lunatic, but it’s because I should make a fool of myself if I didn’t. When I think of what Lady Haigh has just been telling me, of the way in which you saved all our lives the other day, I feel as though I could simply die of shame. How could you—how could you—do it?”
“Pure selfishness,” returned Georgia, with elaborate composure. “I couldn’t do without you, you see.”
“I’m not worth it, Georgie. I couldn’t even behave decently to you an hour after it happened. And I daren’t make any promises for the future, remembering all those I have broken already. But I do ask you to believe that I didn’t know what I was saying when—when I talked about breaking off our engagement the morning you came back. I couldn’t have believed that even when I was off my head I could be such an idiot; but, unfortunately, you heard me say it. Take me on again, dearest. You’ll have a lot to put up with, but——”
“My dear boy, I have never given you up—of my own free will, at any rate.”