Page:The Painted Veil - Maugham - 1925.djvu/41

 Did he mean to keep her there till she had decided? That was absurd. She must talk it over with her mother. She ought to have got up when she spoke, she had waited thinking he would answer, and now, she did not know why, she found it difficult to make a movement. She did not look at him, but she was conscious of his appearance; she had never seen herself marrying a man so little taller than herself. When you sat close to him you saw how good his features were, and how cold his face. It was strange when you couldn’t help being conscious of the devastating passion which was in his heart.

“I don’t know you, I don’t know you at all,” she said tremulously.

He gave her a look and she felt her eyes drawn to his. They had a tenderness which she had never seen in them before, but there was something beseeching in them, like a dog’s that has been whipped, which slightly exasperated her.

“I think I improve on acquaintance,” he said.

“Of course you’re shy, aren’t you?”

It was certainly the oddest proposal she had ever had. And even now it seemed to her that they were saying to one another the last things you would have expected on such an occasion. She was not in the least in love with him. She did not know why she hesitated to refuse him at once.

“I’m awfully stupid,” he said, “I want to tell you that I love you more than anything in the world, but I find it so awfully difficult to say.”

Now that was odd too, for inexplicably enough it touched her; he wasn’t really cold, of course, it