Page:The Other House (London, William Heinemann, 1896), Volume 1.djvu/61

Rh lose himself in the effort to embrace the worst, to think it out. "What should I do? where should I turn?"

She was silent a little. "You ask me too much!" she helplessly sighed.

"Don't say that," replied Tony, "at a moment when I know so little if I mayn't have to ask you still more!" This exclamation made her meet his eyes with a turn of her own that might have struck him had he not been following another train. "To you I can say it, Rose—she's inexpressibly dear to me."

She showed him a face intensely receptive. "It's for your affection for her that I've really given you mine." Then she shook her head—seemed to shake out, like the overflow of a cup, her generous gaiety. "But be easy. We shan't have loved her so much only to lose her."

"I'll be hanged if we shall!" Tony responded. "And such talk's a vile false note in the midst of a joy like yours."

"Like mine?" Rose exhibited some vagueness.

Her companion was already accessible to the