So she
surrendered.
"I will take everything--on one condition. That you will give me--what
you said just now I wouldn't have." The eyes that she lifted to his
were full of tears.
For one moment he did not understand. Very slowly he realized that the
thing he had dreamed and despaired of, that he dared not ask for, was
being divinely offered to him as a free gift. There was no moment, not
even in that night of his madness, in this room nine years ago, nor in
that other night in Howland Street, when he had desired it as he
desired it now.
Her tears hung curved on the curved lashes of her eyes, and spilt
themselves, and fell one by one on to the pages of the manuscript. He
heard them fall.
Before he let himself be carried away by the sweep of her impulse and
his own passion he saw that not honour but common decency forbade him
to take advantage of a moment's inspired tenderness. He had already
made a slight appeal _ad misericordiam_; but that was for her sake not
his own. He realized most completely his impossible position. He had
no income, and he had damaged his health so seriously that it might be
long enough before he could make one; and these facts he could not
possibly mention. She suspected him of poverty; but the smallest hint
of his real state would have roused her infallible instinct of
divination. He had felt, as her eyes rested on his emaciated body,
that they could see the course of its sufferings, its starvation.
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