"You will think over it, I am sure!" Then he rose and started pacing up and down the room, as was his custom when he was irritated or worried, with his head thrust forward and his hands clasped behind his back.
"You will think over it," he murmured again.
"You have another fifteen days before you."
He looked at her for a moment or two with an indefinable smile on his lean, dark face, then he shrugged his shoulders.
"How much longer can you stand the mother's tears," he asked, "and the father's despair?"
"Elza, if she knew," Rosemary rejoined, with an obstinate toss of her head, "would be the first to wish me to stand firm."
"Try her!" Jasper retorted laconically. Then as Rosemary, reproachful, indignant, made no attempt to reply, he went on with harsh insistence: "Have you tried her? Does she know that the life of her son is entirely and absolutely in your hands?"
Jasper gave a harsh laugh. "Then," he said, "I can only repeat what I said just now. Go and tell Elza everything, then see if her arguments will be different from mine!"
"Jasper!" Rosemary exclaimed, flushed with bitterness and resentment.
He paused in his restless walk, looked at her for a moment or two, and then resumed his seat beside her. For an instant it seemed as if he wanted to take her hand, or put his arms round her, but whether she divined this wish or no, certain it is that she made a slight movement, a drawing back away from him. A curious flash, like a veritable volcano of hidden fires, shot through the man's deep, dark eyes, and, as if to control his own movements, he clasped his hands tightly together between his knees. Strangely enough, when he next spoke his voice was full of tenderness and almost of humility.
"I am sorry, dear," he said gently, "if I hurt you. God knows that I would rather be broken to pieces on a rack than to do that. But things have come to a pass," he went on more harshly, "where my duty--and my right--as your natural friend and protector command me to get you out of this impasse before all this damnable business has affected your health, or, God help us! clouded your brain."
"The impasse, as you very justly call it, Jasper," she riposted, "will not cloud my brain, so long as you do not seek to make right seem wrong and wrong right."