e said tremulously, "don't, oh, don't say what will
make us both unhappy. You know that I am your--friend; you know that I
am a great deal older than you are; Geoff's mother, not a woman to
whom--not a woman open to--not a----"

"I will tell you," he said, "I know better; this one thing I know
better. A woman as far above me as heaven is above earth, whom I am not
worth a look or a word from. Do you think I don't know that? You will
say I ought not to have come, knowing what I did, that there was no
woman but you in the world for me, and that you were not for me, nor
ever would have any thought of me. I should have taken care of myself,
don't you think? But I don't think so," he added, almost with violence.
"I have had a year of paradise. I have seen you every day, and heard you
speak, and touched your hand. To-morrow, I will curse my folly that
could not be content with that. But to-day, I am mad and I cannot help
myself. I can't be silent, though it is my only policy. Morning and
night I think of nothing but you. When I go to sleep, and when I wake,
and even when I dream, I can't think of anything but only of what you
say. That is what I am going over and over all day long,--every little
word that you say."

He poured this forth with a haste and fluency utterly unlike his usual
mode of speech, never taking breath, never taking his eyes from her, a
man possessed; while she, shrinking back in her chair, her eyes cast
down, her hands nervously clasping and unclasping each other, listened,
beaten down by the tempest of an emotion such as she had never seen
before, such as she could scarcely understand. She had been wooed long
ago, lightly wooed, herself almost a child; the whole matter little more
than a frolic, though it turned into a tragedy; but she did not know and
had never met with anything like this. He paused a little to recover
his breath, to moisten his parched lips, which were dry and hot with
excitement, and then he resumed.

"You talk of a mother, a sister, a friend. I think you want to mock
me, Lady Markland. If you were to say a woman I ought to be content
to worship, then I could understand you. I know I ought to have been
content. Except that I have gone distracted and can't be silent, can't
keep quiet. Oh, forgive me for it. Here is my life which is all yours,
and my heart to put your foot on if you please; all of me belongs to
you; I wish no better, only forgive me for saying it--just once, once!"
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