Page:The Other House (London, William Heinemann, 1896), Volume 2.djvu/39

Rh they'll be beautiful. We've only to be frank. They are now: I feel it in the kind way you listen to me. If you hadn't asked to speak to me I should have asked it myself. Six months ago I promised I would tell you, and I've known the time was come."

"The time is come, but don't tell me till you've given me a chance," said Paul. He had listened without looking at her, his little eyes pricking with their intensity the remotest object they could reach. "I want so to please you—to make you take a favourable view. There isn't a condition you may make, you know, of any sort whatever, that I won't grant you in advance. And if there's any inducement you can name that I've the least capacity to offer, please regard it as offered with all my heart. You know everything—you understand; but just let me repeat that all I am, all I have, all I can ever be or do"

She laid her hand on his arm as if to help, not to stop him. "Paul, Paul—you're beautiful!" She brushed him with the feather of her tact, but he reddened and continued to avert his big face, as if he were aware that the moment of such an assertion was scarcely the moment to venture to show it.