Page:The Toll of the Bush.pdf/102

girl into a serenity which now held her at a disadvantage, dimly felt, but not consciously realised. She met his reply with a smile, but also with a little catch of the breath. She was seated on the music-stool, her back to the piano, in the drawing-room to which she had led him on his arrival. Mr. Fletcher drew forward a chair and sat down in front of her. There was something in his strong face which held her gaze despite her desire to look elsewhere.

‘Eve Milward,’ he said, ‘it is borne in upon me that I shall prevail against your disinclination, and that the day is not far distant when you will be glad that I had the resolution to try. Is there in your heart nothing to correspond with that prescient?’

Eve’s blue eyes dilated in a sort of speechless fascination, and for a moment it seemed to her that she must yield not only the point he pressed for but the whole argument. Then with a little start she was back in the world of realities.

‘I can only argue from my present feelings,’ she said; ‘and they are such that I must hope for your sake that you will at once forget this conversation and dismiss the idea from your thoughts.’

‘The latter is an impossibility,’ Mr. Fletcher declared. He was silent awhile, but his manner by no means showed a disposition to relinquish the struggle. Eve began again to feel that some concession he must exact from her, and filled with the desire for immediate escape, she debated inwardly what might be the consequences of allowing the renewal of his proposal at some—preferably distant date.