He gave a sign of assent; his silence was more embarrassing than any protest or appeal.

“Oh, I could choose such a wife for you, Keith!—­a wife worthy of you—­a woman as womanly as you are manly; and I can think of her being proud to be your wife, and how all the people who came to your house would admire and love her—­”

He looked up in a bewildered way.

“Gerty,” he said, “I don’t quite know what it is you are speaking about.  You are speaking as if some strange thing had come between us; and I was to go one way, and you another, through all the years to come.  Why, that is all nonsense!  See!  I can take your hand—­that is the hand that gave me the red rose.  You said you loved me, then; you cannot have changed already.  I have not changed.  What is there that would try to separate us?  Only words, Gerty!—­a cloud of words humming round the ears and confusing one.  Oh, I have grown heart-sick of them in your letters, Gerty; until I put the letters away altogether, and I said, ’They are no more than the leaves of last autumn:  when I see Gerty, and take her hand, all the words will disappear then.’  Your hand is not made of words, Gerty; it is warm and kind, and gentle—­it is a woman’s hand.  Do you think words are able to make me let go my grasp of it?  I put them away—­I do not hear any more of them.  I only know that you are beside me, Gerty; and I hold your hand!”

He was no longer the imploring lover:  there was a strange elation, a sort of triumph, in his tone.

“Why, Gerty, do you know why I have come to London?  It is to carry you off—­not with the pipes yelling to drown your screams, as Flora Macdonald’s mother was carried off by her lover, but taking you by the hand, and waiting for the smile on your face.  That is the way out of all our troubles, Gerty:  we shall be plagued with no more words then.  Oh, I understand it all, sweetheart—­your doubts of yourself, and your thinking about the stage:  it is all a return of the old and evil influences that you and I thought had been shaken off forever.  Perhaps that was a little mistake; but no matter.  You will shake them off now, Gerty.  You will show yourself to have the courage of a woman.  It is but one step, and you are free!  Gerty,” said he, with a smile on his face, “do you know what that is?”

He took from his pocket a printed document, and opened it.  Certain words there that caught her eye caused her to turn even paler than she had been; and she would not even touch the paper.  He put it back.

“Are you frightened, sweetheart?  No!  You will take this one step, and you will see how all those fancies and doubts will disappear forever!  Oh, Gerty, when I got this paper into my pocket to-day, and came out into the street, I was laughing to myself; and a poor woman said, ’You are very merry, sir; will you give a poor old woman a copper?’ ‘Well,’ I said, ’here is a sovereign for you, and perhaps you will be merry too?’—­and