"It means that when the world was made we were made for each other. But what has happened to us since? How have we so drifted apart? I think I have been faithful to you in my heart always. But you? You've wandered a million miles away from me. Nothing told you to wait. You have not waited, or you would not live your life as you seem to be living it—among such men and such women. For God's sake, even if you don't care for me as things are now between us, let me take you away from all this, let me put you where you will be safe, where you can be what you were meant to be."
"I—I don't understand," Mary said, her breath coming so quickly that her words seemed stopped, and broken like water that tries to run past scattered stones.
"Don't you? Don't you understand that I love you desperately, that I can't bear my life because I love you so, and because I see you drowning? I'm telling you this in spite of myself. But I know now it had to be. I swear to you, if you'll trust me, if you'll come away with me, you shan't repent. Let me put you somewhere in a safe and beautiful place. That's all I ask. I want no more. I shall force myself to want no more."
"You—love me?" Mary repeated, still in the dream that was made of music and moonlight, the ripple of the sea and the stirring of something new in her nature of which all these sweet and beautiful things seemed part. "Love! I never thought this could happen to me."
Suddenly he caught her hands and held them so that she was forced to turn and look at him, instead of gazing out at sea and moonlight.
"Does it mean anything to you?" he asked, almost fiercely.
"Oh, a great deal," she answered. "I hardly know how much yet. It is so wonderful—so new. Yet somehow not new. I must think about it. I must——"
It was on her lips to say "I must pray about it," but something stopped her. He was strange to her still, in spite of the miracle that was happening, and there were some thoughts which must be kept in the heart, in silence. Perhaps if she had not kept back those words, much of the future might have been different, for he must have guessed at once that, if she were sincere, his thoughts of her had been false thoughts.
"Don't stop to think. Promise me now," he cut her short.
The note of insistence in his voice frightened her, and seemed to break the music of the dream. "I can't promise!" she exclaimed. "I've never wanted to marry. It never seemed possible. I——"