He had been looking for some time for a break in the conversation when he could give it a serious turn. Once or twice he had held his peace, hoping that in silence her thoughts would take the colour of his own, but she had lightly continued the subject. Presently, however, his silence controlled the situation. The drift of his thoughts began to tell. He gazed fixedly at nothing in particular, as if he were thinking of something which concerned her not at all. His thoughts, however, spoke for themselves. She was very much aware that a climax was pending.
"Do you know," he said, "I have spent the happiest evenings in years since I have known you?"
"Have you?" she said, with assumed airiness, but still excited by the conviction which the tone of his voice carried.
"I was going to tell you the other evening," he added, "but somehow the opportunity slipped away."
Carrie was listening without attempting to reply. She could think of nothing worth while to say. Despite all the ideas concerning right which had troubled her vaguely since she had last seen him, she was now influenced again strongly in his favour.
"I came out here to-day," he went on, solemnly, "to tell you just how I feel—to see if you wouldn't listen to me."
Hurstwood was something of a romanticist after his kind. He was capable of strong feelings—often poetic ones—and under a stress of desire, such as the present, he waxed eloquent. That is, his feelings and his voice were coloured with that seeming repression and pathos which is the essence of eloquence.
"You know," he said, putting his hand on her arm, and keeping a strange silence while he formulated words, "that I love you?"
Carrie did not stir at the words. She was bound up completely in the man's atmosphere. He would have church-like silence in order to express his feelings, and she kept it. She did not move her eyes from the flat, open scene before her. Hurstwood waited for a few moments, and then repeated the words.
"You must not say that," she said, weakly.