Here have I been telling you that I love you, and asking you to marry me; and yet you don't seem to have even heard me!' She answered at once, quite sweetly, and with a smile of superiority which maddened him: 'But that subject is barred!' 'How do you mean?
Barred!' 'Yes.

I told you yesterday!' 'But, Stephen,' he cried out quickly, all the alarm in him and all the earnestness of which he was capable uniting to his strengthening, 'can't you understand that I love you, with all my heart?
You are so beautiful; so beautiful!' He felt now in reality what he was saying.
The torrent of his words left no opening for her objection; it swept all merely verbal obstacles before it.

She listened, content in a measure.
So long as he sat at the distance which she had arranged before his coming she did not fear any personal violence.

Moreover, it was a satisfaction to her now to hear him, who had refused her, pleading in vain.

The more sincere his eloquence, the larger her satisfaction; she had no pity for him now.
'I know I was a fool, Stephen! I had my chance that day on the hilltop; and if I had felt then as I feel now, as I have felt every moment since, I would not have been so cold.