Great Heavens! I had apparently been fool enough in my desperate cowardice to actually write the proposal. The letter itself, if she dared to use it, spelt certain ruin.
"Well, you answered the test your own way, and...." I shrugged my shoulders as a suggestive end to the sentence.
She paused a moment looking thoughtfully at me. Then knitting her brows, she asked:
"What is the real meaning of this change, Alexis? Do try for once to be frank. You have always half a dozen secret meanings. You have boasted of this in regard to others—perhaps because you were afraid to do anything else."
"Are you a judge of my fears? I think I have already shewn you that that which I led you to believe frightened me most had in reality no terrors at all for me."
"One thing I know you are afraid of—to break with me." This came with a flash of impetuous anger, bursting out in spite of her efforts at self-restraint.
I smiled.
"We shall see. I have not broken with you. It is you who have broken with me. How often have you not sworn to me," I cried passionately, making another shot—"that there was nothing upon this earth that you would not do if I only asked you? What value should I now set on a broken love-vow?"
"Had I thought you were even in danger, I would have dared even that, Alexis, dangerous and desperate as you know such a hazard must be." She spoke now with a depth of tone that was eloquent of feeling. "What I told you is true—and you know it. There is nothing I will not do for you. Bid me do it now to shew you my earnestness. Shall I leave my husband?—I will do it. Shall I tell the world of Moscow the tale of my love?—I will do it. Nay, bid me strip myself and walk naked through the streets of the city, calling on your name and proclaiming my love—and I will do it with a smile, glorying in my shame because it brings you to me and me to you—never to part again."
This flood of passion spoken with such earnestness as I had never heard from the lips of woman before was almost more than I could endure to hear without telling the truth to her. It abashed me, and the story of the deception I was practising on her rose to my lips: but before I could speak she had resumed, and her wonderful voice had a power such as I cannot describe. It seemed to compel sympathy; and as it became the vehicle for every varying phase of feeling it almost raised an echo of feeling in me.