At last she broke the silence.
"How cheerless your room is," she said, looking about. "Oh, how
cheerless!"
"Did you come here to tell me that?" I said.
"No," she said. "I don't know why I came. Because I was a fool, I
suppose--a fool to think you'd want to see me. Take me home,
Hugo." She rose as she said this and looked towards the door. I
pressed her to take a little whiskey, for she was still as cold as
death and as white as the snow queen in Hans Andersen's tale, but
she refused to let me give her any.
"Take me home, please," she repeated.
Her carriage was waiting a block away. Hendricks, the footman,
received my order with impassivity and shut us in together with
the unconcern of a good servant. It was dark in the carriage, and
neither of us spoke as we whirled through the snowy streets. Once
the lights of a passing hansom illumined my companion's face and I
saw that she was crying. It pleased me to see her suffer; she had
cost me eleven weeks of misery; why should she escape scot-free!
"Hugo," she said, "are you coming back to us, Hugo?"
"I don't know," I said.
"Why don't you know?" she asked.
"Oh, because!" I said.
"That's no answer," she said.
There was a pause.
"I was beginning to care too much about you," I said. "I think I
was beginning to fall in love with you. I've got out of one false
position. Why should I blunder into another?"
"Would it be a false position to love me?" she said.
"Of course that would a good deal depend on you," I said.
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