“Quite impossible, and please not to call me that again! You have no right to do so.”
“May—Miss Lawrence—what does all this mean? Why cannot you be my wife?”
She looked him steadily in the face; her composure was coming back to her. The desire to speak the truth was upon her.
“We have always been friends,” he urged, desiring this thing the more urgently from the unexpected opposition. His pride and vanity were working hard on the same side as his affections. May looked very handsome standing there confronting him, a flush on her cheek, a light in her eyes. It was impossible for Cyril to believe her indifferent to him. He had always regarded himself as irresistible.
Once again he began to plead; once again she let him have a certain licence, and then she cut him short.
“Mr. Cossart, you have said a great deal now, let me say a very little. Perhaps you do not know what a woman most desires in the man she makes her husband. One thing is, I think, a perfect trust in him—his love, his courage, his honour!”
She spoke the last words very distinctly; Cyril’s glance wavered for a moment, then he broke out—
“I love you with all my heart, May!”
“I do not think so,” she answered, “though, perhaps, you think it yourself. Forgive me if I pain you, but you want to know the truth, you say. A woman would not like to feel that in a moment of danger her husband would lose his head, leave her, and think only of saving himself!”
“You are ungenerous,” said Cyril, with a dark flush; “I have refuted that charge once. I shall not repeat my defence.”