“How dear you are, Anna, and how absolutely necessary to me,” he said fondly, as he watched her quiet way of preparing his food and medicine. “I foresee plainly that I can never let you leave me.”
When twilight gathered and the room grew dusky, they had no lights, but sat by the fire, Anna on a low seat beside the sofa, and silence fell. When Keith spoke again, his voice betrayed a rising emotion, and an appeal before which she trembled within herself.
“Anna,” he said, “why should you leave me again? Why need we be separated any more? I need you. I can get strong far faster with you beside me, for you inspire me with a new life. Everything seems sure and strong when you are with me. But I want you wholly mine without fear or favour. Marry me, dear, to-night, to-morrow! What have we to wait for? It is only three months before our marriage was to be, you know.”
Concealing her agitation, and speaking quite steadily and soothingly, Anna answered:—
“But you know, Keith, I must go back in a few weeks, and finish my work in the school and hospital. I have still so much to learn before I can make a really useful missionary, and so little time before May to learn it in. You know I have cut my preparation short a year, now, so that we may go out together. I am sure we ought to wait until May.”
“Oh, Anna!”
The words, so spoken, had all the force of an inarticulate cry from the man’s heart. They told what hours of argument and pleading could not have conveyed,—the yearning need for her presence and her upholding. Anna lifted her eyes to Keith’s, and saw that they were dim with tears. She did not feel them to be unmanly tears, knowing his physical exhaustion, and they moved her profoundly. She rose and walked to the window, looking out into the snowy street. Again that sense that her life was taken out of her own hands came upon her; she felt like those of old who feared as they entered into the cloud. She feared, but, nevertheless, she went back to Keith, and said, very gently, but without hesitation:—
“If we should be married to-morrow night, would that please you, Keith?”
He caught her hand and pressed it to his cheek with pathetic eagerness.
“Oh, my girl, am I wrong to move you to do this for my sake? Forgive me, leave me, if I am leading you faster, farther, than you wish to go.”