Odd was silent under the stress of a new thought, an entirely new thought.
“For Hilda I have no fear,” Katherine continued, still speaking with the same steady quiet voice, still looking into the fire. “In the past her art has absorbed and protected her, and her future is assured. She will marry a good husband.” A flash as of Hilda’s beauty crossed the growing definiteness of Peter’s new thought. That old undoing, that mirage of beauty; he put it aside with some self-disgust, feeling, as he did so, a queer sense of impersonality as though putting away himself as he put away his weakness. He seemed to contemplate himself from an outside aloofness of observation. The trance-like feeling of the illusion of all things which he had felt more than once of late made him hold more firmly to the tonic thought of a fine common-sense.
“Of course, mamma will be safe when Hilda is Lady Hope,” Katherine said; “perhaps I shall be forced to accept the same charity.” Her voice broke a little, and she turned the sombre revolt of her look on Peter; her eyes were full of tears.
“Katherine,” he said, “will you marry me?”
Odd, five minutes before, had not had the remotest idea that he would ask Katherine Archinard to be his wife. Yet one could hardly call the sudden decision that had brought the words to his lips, impulsive. While Katherine spoke, the bitter struggle of the fine young life, surely meant for highest things; the courage of the cheerfulness she never before had failed in; the pride of that repulsion for the often offered solution to her difficulties—a solution many women would have accepted with a sense of the inevitable—became admirably apparent to Odd. Their mutual sympathy and good-fellowship and, almost unconsciously, Hilda’s assured future—Allan Hope—had defined the thought. He felt none of that passion which, now that he looked back on it, made of the miserable year of married life that followed but the logical retribution of its reckless and wilful blindness. The very lack of passion now seemed an added surety of better things. His life with Katherine could count on all that his life with Alicia had failed in. He did not reason on that unexcited sense of impersonality and detachment. He would like her to accept him. He would like to help this fine, proud young creature; he would like sympathetic companionship. He was sure of that. He had not surprised Katherine; she had seen, as clearly as he now saw, what Peter Odd would do. She had not exactly intended to bring him to a realization of this by the morning’s confession, for on the whole Katherine had been perfectly sincere in all that she had said, but she felt that she could rely on no better opportunity. Now she only turned her head towards him, without moving from her position before the fireplace. Katherine never took the trouble to act. She merely aimed at the most advantageous line of conduct and let taste and instinct lead her. Her taste now told her that quiet sincerity was very suitable; she felt, too, a most sincere little dash of proud hesitation.
“Are you generously offering me another form of charity, Mr. Odd? My distress was not conscious of an appeal.”
“You know your own value too well, Katherine, to ask me that. I appeal.”
“Yet the apropos of your offer makes me smart. Another joy of poverty. One can’t trust.”
“It was apropos because a man who loves you would not see you suffer needlessly.” Peter, too, was sincere; he did not say “loved.”
“Shall I let you suffer needlessly?” asked Katherine, smiling a little. “I sha’n’t, if that implies that you love me.”