“Wealthy or poor,” she answered, in a low, sweet tone, “it matters not, because I love you, George.”
“And although we must part; although I must go to London and exchange this free, open, happy life with you daily beside me for the dusty dinginess of chambers wherein the sun never penetrates, yet you will still remain mine?” he cried half doubtingly. “Do you really mean it, Liane?”
“I do,” she answered, in a voice trembling with emotion, and with a look all tenderness and benignity. “It is no fault of yours that you are poor, therefore be of stout heart, and when you return to London remember that one woman alone thinks ever of you, because—because she loves you.”
With the large tears in her beautiful eyes—tears which seemed to him to rise partly from her desire to love him with the power of his love—she put her pure, bright lips, half-smiling, half-prone to reply to tears, against his brow, lined with doubt and eager longing.
“Dearest darling, love of my life,” he whispered through her clouds of soft, silky hair. “I know I, an Englishman, with my blunt manners, must grate upon you sometimes, with your delicate, high-strung feelings. We are as different as the day is from the night. But, Liane, if truth and honesty, and a will so to use my life as to become one of the real workers and helpers in the world—a wish to be manly and upright, strong of heart, and clean of conscience before God and man—if these can atone for lack of culture and refinement, then I hope you will not find me wanting. When I am absent there will be plenty besides me to love you, but I will not believe that any can love you better than I do, or few as truly.”
She hesitated for a single instant as he spoke. She lifted her face from her hands and looked up at him. He was not much taller than she; it was not far. But as she looked another face came between them—a pale, refined face: a face with more poetry, more romance, more passion.
Its sight was to her as a spectre of the past. It held her dumb in terror and dismay.
George saw her hesitation, and the strange horrified look in her eyes. Puzzled, he uttered not a word, but watched her breathlessly.
Liane opened her pale lips, but they closed and tightened upon each other; from beneath her narrowed brows her eyes sent short flashes out upon his, and her breath came and went long and deep, without sound.
“Why are you silent?” he whispered at last.