“Or simply because——” she checked herself—“No, I didn’t mean that—but——”
“But what?”
“Oh, can’t you guess? I want you to estimate me a little, by myself—not measure me by a standard—as you do—there!”
She leant forward, with one hand drooping over her knee, and looked up at him with moist eyes, and behind the moisture burned the longing folly of a woman.
“I don’t want anybody else to please. You are enough for me. All the world.”
Hugh had come prepared. Her sensuous charm had long woven itself around him. He had long known that a touch from him could awaken slumbering volcanoes; that in a moment of madness he would one day give that touch. Even now his pulses beat fast. He was flesh and blood, though his verse was marble. Yet he kept a curb upon himself. He reached out his hand and took her fingers.
“You mustn’t look at me like that. I am not a bad man. But you will make me say things both of us may be sorry for.”
“I don’t care,” she whispered. “Say anything.” The moment had come. In a fraction of a second he could have her youth throbbing in his arms. With an effort of will he threw back her hand and started to his feet. She shrank away frightened.
“Listen, Minna, before we make fools of ourselves. Where is this going to end? Have you thought of it? Use your intelligence instead of your passions. I am speaking brutally to you. I know it. It’s our only chance of salvation. You are throwing yourself away—into perdition perhaps. Do you know that?”
He stood, regarding her sternly; resolved to set her upon his own intellectual plane; to put before her serious issues; at the least, to throw open the floodgates for her pride. Her face paled slightly, and she asked, with quivering lip: “Don’t you care for me—a little?”