"It wouldn't have made you love Claude any the less, would it?"
She had to say something. If she didn't he would never understand. "Not love, perhaps; but—"
The sudden coldness in his voice terrified her again—but differently. "But what, Rosie?"
She cried out, as if the words rent her. "But Claude has no—money."
"And I have. Is that it?"
It was no use to deny it. She nodded dumbly. Besides, she counted on his possession of common sense, though his use of it was slow.
He raised himself from his attitude of leaning on the desk. It was his turn to take shelter amid the dark foliage behind him. He couldn't bear to let the lamplight fall too fully on his face. "Is it this, Rosie," he asked, with an air of bewilderment, "that you'd marry me because I have—the money?"
It seemed to Rosie that the question gave her reasonable cause for exasperation. She was almost sobbing as she said: "Well, I can't marry Claude without money. He can't marry me." A ray was thrown into her little soul when she gasped in addition, "And there's father and mother and Matt!"
Thor's expression lost some of its bewilderment because it deepened to sternness. "But Claude means to marry you, doesn't he?"
She cried out again, with that strange effect of the words rending her. "I don't—know."