"There's only one thing any honourable man would think of doing, Anna. I shall make you my wife at once," I cried.
Her amazement was a sheer delight. It was so complete that she didn't know what to do or say and just stared at me open-eyed. "I didn't say I wanted that, did I?" she stammered at length.
"There's the child, Anna; and neither you nor I can afford to think of our own wishes;" and in proof of my moral duty in the circumstances, I delivered a lecture on the necessity of freeing the child from the stain of its birth.
This gave her time to pull herself together. "Are you in earnest?" she asked when I finished.
"I hold the strongest views in such cases. The best plan will be for me to arrange about the marriage at once, to-day indeed; and probably to-morrow or the next day we can be married."
"But I——" She pulled up suddenly. It looked as if she was going to protest she wouldn't marry a man she'd never seen before. "I'd like to think about it," she substituted uneasily.
"But why any need to think? You showed this afternoon how bitterly you resented my desertion and, unless you were play-acting, how much you still care for me. So why delay when I am willing? It is true that I can't pretend to care for you as I used, but it may all come back again to me. We'll hope so, at any rate."
"But you're engaged to that rich cousin of yours, aren't you?"
This was a good example of her slip-shod methods. As she knew that, she knew also where to have found me of course, so that the little melodramatic recognition scene in the Thiergarten had been a mere picturesque superfluity. I let it pass and replied gravely: "I should not allow that engagement to interfere with my duty to you, Anna."
"You must have changed a lot, then."