“I suppose I am a weak wretch, after all,” said Ella.
Sylvester put down his pipe and stood by her side.
“It is really all your doing, Ella. This is not the first time you have pointed out my way to me. And it won't be the last, will it?”
There was a note of pathetic appeal in his tone that made her heart beat a little faster. Of all the phases of his manhood that her instinctive feminine alertness had caused him to present to her, this one moved her the most strongly. An unwonted shy tenderness came into her eyes.
“It is for you to settle that,” she said.
He looked at her for a moment as if about to speak, but some inward conflict seemed to check the words. A man's memories and dead loves rise up sometimes and stare at him in sad reproach.
“I wish I had the gift of speech,” he said.
“What do you want to say?” she asked gently.
He smiled whimsically. “If I could tell you that, I should have the gift.”
“You'll let me see something of you in London, won't you?”