"Even if I loved you. Tell me that you do love me--as I have hoped and dreamed--as I dared to believe sometimes at Hale, when my wedding-day was so near, that I seemed like some wretch bound to the wheel, for whom there is no possibility of escape. That is all over now, darling. To all intents and purposes I am free. Confess that you love me." This was said half tenderly, half imperiously--with the air of a conqueror accustomed to easy triumphs, an air which this man's experience had made natural to him. "Come, Clarissa, think how many miles I have travelled for the sake of this one stolen half hour. Don't be so inexorable." He looked down at her with a smile on his face, not very much alarmed by her obduracy. It seemed to him only a new form of feminine eccentricity. Here was a woman who actually could resist him for ten minutes at a stretch--him, George Fairfax! "I am very sorry you should have come so far. I am very sorry you should have taken so much trouble; it is quite wasted." "Then you don't like me, Miss Lovel," still half playfully--the thing was too impossible to be spoken of in any other tone. "For some reason or other I am obnoxious to you. Look me full in the face, and swear that you don't care a straw for me." "I am not going to swear anything so foolish. You are not obnoxious to me. I have no wish to forfeit your friendship; but I will not hear of anything more than friendship from your lips." "Why not?" "For many reasons. In the first place, because there would be treason against Lady Geraldine in my listening to you." "Put that delusion out of your mind. There would be no treason; all is over between Lady Geraldine and me." "There are other reasons, connected with papa." "Oh, your father is against me. Yes, that is only natural. Any more reasons, Clarissa?" "One more." "What is that?" "I cannot tell you." "But I insist upon being told." She tried her uttermost to avoid answering his questions; but he was persistent, and she admitted at last that she had promised not to listen to him. "To whom was the promise given?" "That is my secret." "To your father?" "That is my secret, Mr. Fairfax. You cannot extort it from me. And now I must go back to papa, if you please, or he will be sending some one to look for me." "And I shall be discovered in Mr. Capulet's orchard. Ten minutes more, Clarissa, and I vanish amidst the woods of Arden, through which I came like a poacher in order to steal upon you unawares by that little gate. And now, my darling, since we have wasted almost all our time in fencing with words, let us be reasonable. Promises such as you speak of are pledges given to the winds. They cannot hold an hour against true love. Listen, Clary, listen."