Page:The Other House (London, William Heinemann, 1896), Volume 2.djvu/164

150 unable to tell her, only meeting her mettle with his stupor, and she continued, with the lightest hint of reproach in her quiet pain: "I thank you for giving that graceful name to my weak boast that you admire me."

He had a sense of comparative idiotcy. "Do you expect me—on that admiration—to marry you?"

"Bless your innocent heart, no!—for what do you take me? I expect you simply to make people believe that you mean to."

"And how long will they believe it if I don't?"

"Oh, if it should come to that," said Rose, "you can easily make them believe that you have!" She took a step so rapid that it was almost a spring; she had him now and, with her hands on his shoulders, she held him fast. "So you see, after all, dearest, how little I ask!"

He submitted, with no movement but to close his eyes before the new-born dread of her caress. Yet he took the caress when it came—the dire confession of her hard embrace, the long entreaty of her stony kiss. He might still have been a creature trapped in steel; after she had let him go he still stood at a loss how to turn. There was something,