Then he told her, in a word, that about himself which he thought she would despise; and she saw that he thought she heard it for the first time.

Lifting her eyebrows in pretty incredulity.  “Not really?” she said.

“It is true,” he cried with fierce emphasis.

At that she looked grave.

He had been trying to make her serious; but no sooner did he see her look of light and joy pass into a look of thought than he was filled with that sort of acute misery which differs from other sorrows as acute pain differs from duller aches.

“My darling,” he said, his heart was wrung with the words—­“my darling, if I have hurt you, I have almost killed myself.” (Man that he was, he believed that his life must ebb in this pain.)

“Why?” she asked.  “How?”

He went a step nearer her, but as it came to him every moment more clearly that he had deceived her, as he realised what he had gained and what he now thought to forego, his voice forsook him in his effort to speak.  Words that he tried to say died on his lips.

But she saw that he had tried to say that because of it she should not marry him.

He tried again to speak and made better work of it.  “This that has come to us—­this love that has taken us both—­you will say it is not enough to—­to—­”

She lifted up her face to him.  Her cheeks were flushed; her eyes were full of light.  “This that has come to us, Alec—­” (At his name he came nearer yet) “this that has taken us both” (she faltered) “is enough.”

He came near to her again; he took her hands into his; and all that he felt and all that she felt, passed from his eyes to hers, from hers to his.

He said, “It seems like talking in church, but common things must be said and answered, and—­Sophie—­what will your father say?”

“I don’t know,” she said; but happiness made her playful; she stroked the sleeve of his coat, as if to touch it were of more interest to her.  “I will give him my fortune to make up, and come to you penniless.”

“He won’t consent,” he urged.

There was still a honeyed carelessness in her voice and look.  “At the great age to which I have attained,” said she, “fathers don’t interfere.”

“What can I do or say,” he said, “to make you consider?” for it seemed to him that her thoughts and voice came from her spellbound in some strange delight, as the murmur comes from a running stream, without meaning, except the meaning of all beautiful and happy things in God’s world.

“What must I consider?”

“The shop—­the trade.”

“When you were a very young butcher, and first took to it, did you like it?”

“I wasn’t squeamish,” he said; and then he told her about his father.  After that he philosophised a little, telling something of the best that he conceived might be if men sought the highest ideal in lowly walks of life, instead of seeking to perform imperfectly some nobler business.  It was wonderful how much better he could speak to her than to his brother, but Sophia listened with such perfect assent that his sense of honour again smote him.