Now, in his lonely, sleepless nights, the misery on the white face comes back and back to him in the darkness of his room, but then he is blind to it.
In an annoyed mood to begin with, irritated beyond bearing by his own helpless, ignominious position, as he fancies, he has no perception left for his own danger of losing her.
And the man, who had lived till five-and-twenty, desiring real love, and not knowing it, deliberately trampled upon it without recognising what he did.
His words cut the girl terribly.
It seems impossible for the second that she can force herself to speak again to him, but the terrible, irrepressible longing within her nerves her for one more effort.
"Is that all you can tell me? Do you not care for me at all?"
He looks at her and hesitates. So modest, so appealing, so timid, and yet so passionate! Surely this is genuine love for him. Why thrust it back? But the thought recurs. No. She is rushing him; and he declines to be rushed. Also a sort of half-embarrassment comes over him, a nervous instinct to put off, ward off a scene in which he will be called upon to demonstrate feelings he may not satisfy.
He laughs slightly, and says:
"Of course I do! I like you very much!"
The tones are slighting and contemptuous, enough so to convey the polite warning: Don't go any further, and force me to be positively rude to you.