"You're not angry with me? I can't help it if I'm like this. I should
like to go and see you; it would be so much to me. But I must not. But
why mustn't I?"
"I know no reason, except that you don't care for me."
"But you know that isn't so."
"Come, dearest, be reasonable. You're not going to stop here all your
life playing the viola da gamba. The hour of departure has come," he
said, perceiving her very thought; "be reasonable, come and see me
to-morrow. Come to lunch, and I'll arrange. You know that you--"
"Yes, I believe that," she said, in response to a change which had come
into her appreciation. "But can I trust myself? Suppose I did go away,
and repented and left you. Where should I go? I could not come back
here. Father would forgive me, I daresay, but I could not come back
here."
"'Repented,' Those are fairy tales," he said lifting her gold hair from
her ear and kissing it. "A woman does not leave the man who adores her."
"You told me they often did."
"How funny you are.... They do sometimes, but not because they repent."
Her head was on his shoulder, and she stood looking at him a long while
without speaking.
"Then you do love me, dearest? Tell me so again."