’Mr. Dagworthy, don’t speak like this—­don’t say more—­I beg you not to!  I cannot listen as you would wish me to.’

‘You can’t listen?  But you don’t know what I have to say still,’ he urged, with hasty entreaty, his voice softer.  ’I’m asking nothing yet; I only want you to know how you’ve made me feel towards you.  No feeling will ever come to you like this that’s come to me, but I want you to know of it, to try and understand what it means—­to try and think of me.  I don’t ask for yes or no, it wouldn’t be reasonable; you haven’t had to think of me in this way.  But God knows how I shall live without you; it would be the cruelest word woman ever said if you refused even to give me a hope.’

‘I cannot—­do hear me—­it is not in my power to give you hope.’

’Oh, you say that because you think you must, because I have come to you so suddenly; I have offended you by talking in this way when we scarcely know each other even as friends, and you have to keep me at a distance; I see it on your face.  Do you think there is a danger that I should be less respectful to you than I ought?  That’s because you don’t understand me.  I’ve spoken in rough, hasty words, because to be near you takes all sense from me.  Look, I’m quieter now.  What I ought to have said at first is this.  You’re prejudiced against me; you’ve heard all sorts of tales; I know well enough what people say about me—­well, I want you to know me better.  We’ll leave all other feelings aside.  We’ll say I just wish you to think of me in a just way, a friendly way, nothing more.  It’s impossible for you to do more than that at first.  No doubt even your father has told you that I have a hasty temper, which leads me to say and do things I’m soon sorry for.  It’s true enough, but that doesn’t prove that I am a brute, and that I can’t mend myself.  You’ve heard things laid to my charge that are false—­about my doings in my own home—­you know what I mean.  Get to know me better, and some day I’ll tell you the whole truth.  Now it’s only this I ask of you—­be just to me.  You’re not a woman like these in Dunfield who talk and talk behind one’s back; though I have seen so little of you, don’t I know the difference between you and them?  I’m ignorant enough, compared with you, but I can feel what it is that puts you above all other women.  It must be that that makes me mad to gain a kind word from you.  One word—­that you’ll try to think of me; and I’ll live on that as long as I can.’

The mere utterances help little to an understanding of the terrible force of entreaty he put into this speech.  His face, his hands, the posture of his body, all joined in pleading.  He had cast off all shamefacedness, and spoke as if his life depended on the answer she would return; the very lack of refinement in his tone, in his pronunciation of certain words, made his appeal the more pathetic.  With the quickness of jealousy, he had guessed at the meaning there might