bel added with due inconsequence.

"I don't believe that. You're angry, sometimes--that I can believe,
though I've never seen it. But I'm sure you're never 'cross.'"

"Not even when I lose my temper?"

"You don't lose it--you find it, and that must be beautiful." Osmond
spoke with a noble earnestness. "They must be great moments to see."

"If I could only find it now!" Isabel nervously cried.

"I'm not afraid; I should fold my arms and admire you. I'm speaking very
seriously." He leaned forward, a hand on each knee; for some moments he
bent his eyes on the floor. "What I wish to say to you," he went on at
last, looking up, "is that I find I'm in love with you."

She instantly rose. "Ah, keep that till I am tired!"

"Tired of hearing it from others?" He sat there raising his eyes to her.
"No, you may heed it now or never, as you please. But after all I must
say it now." She had turned away, but in the movement she had stopped
herself and dropped her gaze upon him. The two remained a while in this
situation, exchanging a long look--the large, conscious look of the
critical hours of life. Then he got up and came near her, deeply
respectful, as if he were afraid he had been too familiar. "I'm
absolutely in love with you."

He had repeated the announcement in a tone of almost impersonal
discretion, like a man who expected very little from it but who spoke
for his own needed relief. The tears came into her eyes: this time
they obeyed the sharpness of the pang that suggested to her somehow
the slipping of a fine bolt--backward, forward, she couldn't have said
which. The words he had uttered made him, as he stood there, beautiful
and generous, invested him as with the golden air of early autumn; but,
morally speaking, she retreated before them--facing him still--as she
had retreated in the other cases before a like encounter. "Oh don't say
that, please," she answered with an intensity that expressed the dread
of having, in this case too, to choose and decide. What made her dread
great was precisely the force which, as it would seem, ought to have
banished all dread--the sense of something within herself, deep down,
that she supposed to be inspired and trustful passion. It was there
like a large sum stored in a bank--which there was a terror in having to
begin to spend. If she touched it, it would all come out.

"I haven't the idea that it will matter much to you," said Osmond. "I've
too little to offer you. What I have