“Let me think!  I can’t answer you to-night.”

“To-night, or never!—­Oh yes, I understand well enough, all your reasons for hesitating.  It would mean relinquishing the wedding-dress and the carriages and all the rest of the show that delights women.  You are afraid of Mrs. Grundy crying shame when it is known that you have travelled across Europe with me.  You feel it will be difficult to resume your friendships afterwards.  I grant all these things, but I didn’t think they would have meant so much to Cecily.”

“You know well that none of these reasons have any weight with me.  It is only in joking that you can speak of them.  But the unkindness to them all, dear!  Think of it!”

“Why say ‘to them all’?  Wouldn’t it be simpler to say ’the unkindness to Mallard’?”

She looked up into his face.

“Why does love make a man speak so bitterly and untruthfully?  Nothing could make me do you such a wrong.”

“Because you are so pure of heart and mind that nothing but truth can be upon your lips.  If I were not very near madness, I could never speak so to you.  My own dear love, think only of what I suffer day after day!  And what folly is it that would keep us apart!  Suppose they had none but conscientious motives; in that case, these people take upon themselves to say what is good for us, what we may be allowed and what not; they treat us as children.  Of course, it is all for your protection.  I am not fit to be your husband, my beautiful girl!  Tell me—­who knows me better, Mallard or yourself?”

“No one knows you as I do, dearest, nor ever will.”

“And do you think me too vile a creature to call you my wife?”

“I need not answer that.  You are as much nobler than I am as your strength is greater than mine.”

“But they would remind you that you are an heiress.  I have not made so good a use of my own money as I might have done, and the likelihood is that I shall squander yours, bring you to beggary.  Do you believe that?”

“I know it is not true.”

“Then what else can they oppose to our wish?  Here are all the objections, and all seem to be worthless.  Yet there might be one more.  You are very young—­how I rejoice in knowing it, sweet flower!—­perhaps your love of me is a mere illusion.  It ought to be tested by time; very likely it may die away, and give place to something truer.”

“If so let me die myself sooner than survive such happiness!”

“Why, then what have they to say for themselves?  Their opposition is mistake, stubborn error.  And are we to sacrifice two whole years, the best time of our lives, to such obstinacy?  Either of us may die, Cecily.  Suppose it to be my lot, what would be your thoughts then?”

His head bent to hers, and their faces touched.

“Dare you risk that, my love?”

“I dare not.”

Her answer trembled upon his hearing as though it came upon the night air from the sea.