n--see, see what I've done!"

"Oh"--murmured Priscilla, in great distress and amazement. Was the
poor dear delirious? And she tried to get her hands away.

But Tussie would not let them go. He held them in a clutch that seemed
like hot iron in both his, and dragging himself nearer to them covered
them with wild kisses.

Lady Shuttleworth was appalled. "Tussie," she said in a very even
voice, "you must let Miss Neumann-Schultz go now. You must be quiet
again now. Let her go, dear. Perhaps she'll--come again."

"Oh mother, leave me alone," cried Tussie, lying right across his
pillows, his face on Priscilla's hands. "What do you know of these
things? This is my darling--this is my wife--dream of my spirit--star
of my soul--"

"Never in this world!" cried Lady Shuttleworth, coming round to the
head of the bed as quickly as her shaking limbs would take her.

"Yes, yes, come here if you like, mother--come close--listen while I
tell her how I love her. I don't care who hears. Why should I? If I
weren't ill I'd care. I'd be tongue-tied--I'd have gone on being
tongue-tied for ever. Oh I bless being ill, I bless being ill--I can
say anything, anything--"

"Tussie, don't say it," entreated his mother. "The less you say now
the more grateful you'll be later on. Let her go."

"Listen to her!" cried Tussie, interrupting his kissing of her hands
to look up at Priscilla and smile with a sort of pitying wonder, "Let
you go? Does one let one's life go? One's hope of salvation go? One's
little precious minute of perfect happiness go? When I'm well again I
shall be just as dull and stupid as ever, just such a shy fool, not
able to speak--"

"But it's a gracious state"--stammered poor Priscilla.

"Loving you? Loving you?"

"No, no--not being able to speak. It's always best--"

"It isn't. It's best to be true to one's self, to show honestly what
one feels, as I am now--as I am now--" And he fell to kissing her
hands again.

"Tussie, this isn't being honest," said Lady Shuttleworth sternly,
"it's being feverish."

"Listen to her! Was ever a man interrupted like this in the act of
asking a girl to marry him?"

"Tussie!" cried Lady Shuttleworth.

"Ethel, will you marry me? Because I love you so? It's an absurd
reason--the most magnificently absurd reason, but I know there's no
other why you should--"

Priscilla was shaken and stricken as she had never yet been; shaken
with pity, stricken with remorse. She looked down at h