Lady Shuttleworth was appalled. "Tussie," she said in a very even voice, "you must let Miss Neumann-Schultz go now. You must be quiet again now. Let her go, dear. Perhaps she'll--come again." "Oh mother, leave me alone," cried Tussie, lying right across his pillows, his face on Priscilla's hands. "What do you know of these things? This is my darling--this is my wife--dream of my spirit--star of my soul--" "Never in this world!" cried Lady Shuttleworth, coming round to the head of the bed as quickly as her shaking limbs would take her. "Yes, yes, come here if you like, mother--come close--listen while I tell her how I love her. I don't care who hears. Why should I? If I weren't ill I'd care. I'd be tongue-tied--I'd have gone on being tongue-tied for ever. Oh I bless being ill, I bless being ill--I can say anything, anything--" "Tussie, don't say it," entreated his mother. "The less you say now the more grateful you'll be later on. Let her go." "Listen to her!" cried Tussie, interrupting his kissing of her hands to look up at Priscilla and smile with a sort of pitying wonder, "Let you go? Does one let one's life go? One's hope of salvation go? One's little precious minute of perfect happiness go? When I'm well again I shall be just as dull and stupid as ever, just such a shy fool, not able to speak--" "But it's a gracious state"--stammered poor Priscilla. "Loving you? Loving you?" "No, no--not being able to speak. It's always best--" "It isn't. It's best to be true to one's self, to show honestly what one feels, as I am now--as I am now--" And he fell to kissing her hands again. "Tussie, this isn't being honest," said Lady Shuttleworth sternly, "it's being feverish." "Listen to her! Was ever a man interrupted like this in the act of asking a girl to marry him?" "Tussie!" cried Lady Shuttleworth. "Ethel, will you marry me? Because I love you so? It's an absurd reason--the most magnificently absurd reason, but I know there's no other why you should--" Priscilla was shaken and stricken as she had never yet been; shaken with pity, stricken with remorse. She looked down at him in dismay while he kissed her hands with desperate, overwhelming love. What was she to do? Lady Shuttleworth tried to draw her away. What was she to do? If Tussie was overwhelmed with love, she was overwhelmed with pity. "Ethel--Ethel--" gasped Tussie, kissing her hands, looking up at her, kissing them again. Pity overcame her, engulfed her. She bent her head down to his and laid her cheek an instant on the absurd flannel nightingale, tenderly, apologetically. "Ethel--Ethel," choked Tussie, "will you marry me?" "Dear Tussie," she whispered in a shaky whisper, "I promise to answer you when you are well. Not yet. Not now. Get quite well, and then if you still want an answer I promise to give you one. Now let me go." "Ethel," implored Tussie, looking at her with a wild entreaty in his eyes, "will you kiss me? Just once--to help me to live--"