‘Tell me the hour when it will be most convenient to them to receive me,’ said Alvan.

She stopped walking in sheer fright.

‘My father—­my mother?’ she said, imaging within her the varied horror of each and the commotion.

’To-morrow or the day after—­not later.  No delays!  You are mine, we are one; and the sooner my cause is pleaded the better for us both.  If I could step in and see them this instant, it would be forestalling mischances.  Do you not see, that time is due to us, and the minutes are our gold slipping away?’

She shrank her hand back:  she did not wish to withdraw the hand, only to shun the pledge it signified.  He opened an abyss at her feet, and in deadly alarm of him she exclaimed:  ‘Oh! not yet; not immediately.’  She trembled, she made her petition dismal by her anguish of speechlessness.  ’There will be such . . . not yet!  Perhaps later.  They must not be troubled yet—­at present.  I am . . .  I cannot—­pray, delay!’

‘But you are mine!’ said Alvan.  ’You feel it as I do.  There can be no real impediment?’

She gave an empty sigh that sought to be a run of entreaties.  In fear of his tongue she caught at words to baffle it, senseless of their imbecility:  ’Do not insist:  yes, in time:  they will—­they—­they may.  My father is not very well . . . my mother:  she is not very well.  They are neither of them very well:  not at present!—­Spare them at present.’

To avoid being carried away, she flung herself from the centaur’s back to the disenchanting earth; she separated herself from him in spirit, and beheld him as her father and mother and her circle would look on this pretender to her hand, with his lordly air, his Jew blood, and his hissing reputation—­for it was a reputation that stirred the snakes and the geese of the world.  She saw him in their eyes, quite coldly:  which imaginative capacity was one of the remarkable feats of cowardice, active and cold of brain even while the heart is active and would be warm.

He read something of her weakness.  ’And supposing I decide that it must be?’

‘How can I supplicate you!’ she replied with a shiver, feeling that she had lost her chance of slipping from his grasp, as trained women of the world, or very sprightly young wits know how to do at the critical moment:  and she had lost it by being too sincere.  Her cowardice appeared to her under that aspect.

‘Now I perceive that the task is harder,’ said Alvan, seeing her huddled in a real dismay.  ’Why will you not rise to my level and fear nothing!  The way is clear:  we have only to take the step.  Have you not seen tonight that we are fated for one another?  It is your destiny, and trifling with destiny is a dark business.  Look at me.  Do you doubt my having absolute control of myself to bear whatever they put on me to bear, and hold firmly to my will to overcome them!  Oh! no delays.’

‘Yes!’ she cried; ‘yes, there must be.’