She paused for breath, and he opened his lips to speak, but she signed to him to be silent.
“Let me finish. I couldn’t bear to think that your work was everything to you, and that I—I was merely the _Hausfrau_ that bore your name and sat at your table. It might be enough for some women, but it wouldn’t be enough for me. I warn you that if you ever let me drop into the background of life I—I don’t know what I might not do. I told you just now that I wasn’t conventional. Love is the only convention that I own. Gilbert, tell me something quite truthfully. If I am asking things you can’t give me, let us break off the engagement before it is too late. I want”—her voice broke a little and her eyes were dimmed with feeling—“I want a great deal of love. I’ve never had it, you know, and I—I’m so hungry. If I didn’t love you, I shouldn’t be talking like this. You know I love you; but you—you—Gilbert——”
She had risen from her seat and faced him. She was very much in earnest, and her mouth trembled like a child’s. Her full, rounded bosoms under the linen and lace heaved with her quick heart-beats; her eyes asked piteously for love.
She was very beautiful in that moment. She was young and fresh and fragrant, with not a touch of artifice about her. There was no man alive that would not have been touched by her beautiful, pleading eyes. She promised so much. The hint of passion in her eyes and colouring would have allured any man, and Gilbert was by nature a passionate animal. Passion and ambition had warred from his youth, and he had deliberately crushed out his warm human instincts. Until he met Claudia they had been absolutely under control. Now, as on the night he had proposed to her, something swept over him like a huge wave and swamped his brain. He only knew that he desired this girl and that he had never been thwarted in anything he had set his heart upon. He did love her; what more could she want? She was young and immature; she did not understand that man’s feelings may be the deeper for not finding constant expression. Later, when they were married, she would understand better.
He forgot they were in the garden of Holme Court—in his cooler moments he was desperately afraid of any demonstrations of affection—and he sprang to his feet and caught her in his strong arms. He showered kisses on her passionate, trembling lips, kisses that sent a wild thrill of fearful joy through her, that made the placid, sunny garden rock and reel before her eyes, and gave her a vivid glimpse of what marriage might mean. And no man had ever roused her passions before. This man had always had the power to do so since the dinner-party when he had held her hand in his and asked if he might claim the privileges of old friendship and call her Claudia. Something had stirred uneasily then.
