Whatever the influence was, it moved me to rise from my seat, and to join him at the parapet.
"You cannot expect me to decide on such a serious matter as this at once," I said. "Will you give me a little time to think?"
"You are your own mistress," he rejoined bitterly. "Why ask me to give you time? You can take any time you please—you can do as you like."
"Give me till the end of the week," I went on. "Let me be sure that my father persists in not answering either your letter or mine. Though I am my own mistress, nothing but his silence can justify me in going away secretly, and being married to you by a stranger. Don't press me, Oscar! It isn't very long to the end of the week."
Something seemed to startle him—something in my voice perhaps which told him that I was really distressed. He looked round at me quickly, and caught me with the tears in my eyes.
"Don't cry, for God's sake!" he said. "It shall be as you wish. Take your time. We will say no more about it till the end of the week."
He kissed me in a hurried startled way, and gave me his arm to walk back.
"Grosse is coming to-day," he continued. "He mustn't see you looking as you are looking now. You must rest and compose yourself. Come home."
I went back with him, feeling—oh, so sad and sore at heart! My last faint hope of a renewal of my once-pleasant intimacy with Madame Pratolungo was at an end. She stood revealed to me now as a woman whom I ought never to have known—a woman with whom I could never again exchange a friendly word. I had lost the companion with whom I had once been so happy; and I had pained and disappointed Oscar. My life has never looked so wretched and so worthless to me as it looked to-day on the pier at Ramsgate.
He left me at the door, with a gentle encouraging pressure of my hand.