“Persistent!” murmured Laura. “He simply wouldn’t talk of anything else. It was making him sick, he said. And he did have a fever⁠—often. But he would come out to see me just the same. One night, when it was pouring rain⁠—Well, I’ll tell you. He had been to dinner with us, and afterwards, in the drawing-room, I told him ‘no’ for the hundredth time just as plainly as I could, and he went away early⁠—it wasn’t eight. I thought that now at last he had given up. But he was back again before ten the same evening. He said he had come back to return a copy of a book I had loaned him⁠— Jane Eyre it was. Raining! I never saw it rain as it did that night. He was drenched, and even at dinner he had had a low fever. And then I was sorry for him. I told him he could come to see me again. I didn’t propose to have him come down with pneumonia, or typhoid, or something. And so it all began over again.”

“But you loved him, Laura?” demanded Mrs. Cressler. “You love him now?”

Laura was silent. Then at length: