You can do everything--I can do nothing! O Miss
Swancourt!' he burst out wildly, his heart swelling in his throat,
'I must tell you how I love you! All these months of my absence I
have worshipped you.'
He leapt from his seat like the impulsive lad that he was, slid
round to her side, and almost before she suspected it his arm was
round her waist, and the two sets of curls intermingled.
So entirely new was full-blown love to Elfride, that she trembled
as much from the novelty of the emotion as from the emotion
itself. Then she suddenly withdrew herself and stood upright,
vexed that she had submitted unresistingly even to his momentary
pressure. She resolved to consider this demonstration as
premature.
'You must not begin such things as those,' she said with
coquettish hauteur of a very transparent nature 'And--you must not
do so again--and papa is coming.'
'Let me kiss you--only a little one,' he said with his usual
delicacy, and without reading the factitiousness of her manner.
'No; not one.'
'Only on your cheek?'
'No.'
'Forehead?'
'Certainly not.'
'You care for somebody else, then? Ah, I thought so!'
'I am sure I do not.'
'Nor for me either?'
'How can I tell?' she said simply, the simplicity lying merely in
the broad outlines of her manner and speech. There were the
semitone of voice and half-hidden expression of eyes which tell
the initiated how very fragile is the ice of reserve at these
times.
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