I must work on another
year."
I felt the burning, tremulous fingers grow cold in mine. Her face
paled till it was like white stone. Then suddenly she withdrew her
hand from my clasp, and started to her feet.
"Victor, I cannot! no, I cannot! I cannot wait another year! It will
kill me!" she said, passionately, looking away from me, and pacing a
short length of the floor backwards and forwards before me, as I
rose, too, and stood watching dizzily the incomparable figure pass
and repass, hardly master of myself.
"Dearest," she continued; "this is what I came to say--let us marry
now. I thought you would have successfully finished your work, and
we might do so; but now, now, even as it is, let it be as it is, let
it be unfinished, and still, still let us marry. There is no real
bar as there might be. There is no question of wrong to any one. We
are to be married--it cannot matter to any one when we are. Continue
to work afterwards. I am willing to be second always, in every
thing, to your work. But don't drive me from you altogether. Let me
stay with you now I have come. Let us marry now--here. Let us go
before some official--the Maire, or some one, or English consul, no
matter whom--this afternoon! Victor, if not now, that day you desire
will never come. I shall never be your own. Think how it has receded
and receded into time! We have been engaged now more than three
years!"
She paused in front of me, and lifted her face--brilliant, glowing,
appealing--with an intensity of passionate, eager longing in it that
defied her words to express.
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