His eyes held such a piteously fearful look that Mavis was moved in spite of herself.  He went on: 

“If my disposition were like my twisted body, it wouldn’t matter.  But I love life, movement, struggling.  Were I as I used to be, I should love to have a beautiful, responsive woman for my own.  I should love to have you.”

Before Mavis knew what she had done, she had put her hand on his.  Then he said, as if speaking to himself: 

“What have I to offer besides a helpless, envious love?  My wife would be a nurse, not a mistress, as she should be.”

“Stop! stop!” she pleaded.

“No, I will not stop,” he cried, as he bent over to hold her head so that her eyes looked into his.  “You shall listen and then decide.  I love you.  If it’s good enough, I’m yours.  You know what I have to offer, and I ask you to be my wife because I can’t help myself.  Because—­”

Mavis had closed her eyes for fear that he should read her heart.  He passionately kissed the closed lids before sinking back exhausted in his chair.

“Listen to me,” said Mavis after a while.  “It’s I who am to blame.  Let me go away so that you can forget me.”

“Forget you! forget you!” he cried.  “No, you shall not go away; not till you’ve said ‘yes’ or ‘no’ to what I ask.”

“When shall I answer?”

“Give yourself time—­only—­”

“Only?”

“Don’t keep me waiting longer than you can help.”

For three days, Mavis drifted upon uncertain tides.  She was borne rapidly in one direction only to float as certainly in another.  She lacked sufficient strength of purpose to cast anchor and abide by the consequences.  She deplored her irresolution, but, try as she might, she found it a matter of great difficulty to give her mind to the consideration of Harold’s offer.  Otherwise, the most trivial happenings imprinted themselves on her brain:  the aspect of the food she ate, the lines on her landlady’s face, the flittings in and out of the front door of the “dust-cloak” on its way to trumpery social engagements, the while its mother minded the baby, all acquired in her eyes a prominence foreign to their importance.  Also, thoughts of Windebank now and again flooded her mind.  Then she remembered all he had done for her, at which gratitude welled from her soul.  At such times she would be moved by a morbid consideration for his feelings; she longed to pay back the money he had spent on her illness, and felt that her mind would never be at ease on the matter till she had.

If only he would come down, and, despite anything she could say or do, insist on marrying her and determine to win her heart; failing that, if he would only write words of passionate longing which might awaken some echo in her being!  She read and re-read the letter in which he offered her marriage; she tried to see in his formal phrases some approximation to a consuming love, but in vain.