“Dearest,” cried Harry, when he had shut the door behind him, “it isn’t true, is it? You can’t mean to break with me altogether?”
He came closer to her, and took her two hands; they were quite cold.
“Your father has refused his consent,” she said, with a little drawing back of her head, “and so has my uncle.”
He let the hands fall.
“And so it is all over?” he said almost breathlessly.
“It is not my fault. What can I do?”
She had entered the room feeling that it would be a simple matter to cut the cord without remorse, for it seemed to her that Harry had cheated her, and her sense of justice smarted. She had shrunk from seeing him, but being forced to do so, she would have small compunction. Now it surprised her to find that her resolution was hardly what it had been before she saw him, they had not met since the day she had accepted him, and his actual presence began to affect her a little. Things are so easy when we rehearse them with only ourselves for audience, but they have a hideous knack of complicating themselves when the curtain is up and the play begins. Isoline realized with a pang that she liked him very much—more than she had remembered, in fact.
“And so you do not care for me after all,” he said, looking at her with eyes in which tears had gathered in spite of his efforts to keep them back.
“It is not that,” faltered she.
“What is it then? Can’t you wait for me? Can’t you trust me? It will all come right in the end if we only have patience,” said the man, who was surely one of the least appropriate apostles of patience in the kingdom. “I can work. I shall have to go to London and see what I can get to do. I would do anything for you, Isoline, darling. It would not matter if we began in a humble way, would it, once we had something settled to go upon? We should be much, much happier than many who are rich.”