But I did not know how to go, nor where. And I knew not how I should bear to leave Dick’s boy behind. I had no money, either. I must earn it first. And how to do that? In a country where there was nothing for a woman to do who had never been trained to work with her hands!
“What is there I can do?” I said to Maurice Stair. “For God’s sake tell me how I can earn money to leave this country and never see it again.”
“There is no way that a girl like you can earn money here,” he said. “There is only one thing to do, one thing which I am always urging—to marry: to marry me. Be my wife and I will take you away.”
“Oh! don’t, don’t. How can you ask me that? You know I have nothing to give. You know I can never love you.”
“I will make you love me, Deirdre,” he cried, and even in my dull misery a ghostly smile twisted my lips to hear once more that vain-glorious boast so often on men’s lips!
“I don’t care—I will ask nothing of you—until you love me—Until then I want nothing of you, only to be near you, to have the right to take care of you, to give you all you wish for, to do all you desire. Oh! Deirdre, do not turn away from me—I want you—I want you.—I am a failure and a good-for-nothing now, but with you at my side to help and guide me I feel that I could carve out a great career—make a great name for you to bear. I know that I have it in me to do great things, and for your sake and with you beside me I will do them. Why spoil two lives?—mine as well as your own. You say your life is a wasted one! Don’t let it be. Do something with it: make a man of me! Help me to become something, instead of pitching away my youth, a waster and loafer who will never do or be anything. If you refuse me, my life will be over as sure as I am standing here. God knows what will become of me.”
He stood there pleading in his low, gentle voice, pale and handsome and chivalrous-looking in the moonlight—the liquid, silver, African moonlight that had tricked and mocked me! And the great, empty woman-land echoed back to me his pathetic pleading words. The scarlet stars hung overhead, and the golden moon that had seen Anthony Kinsella lying dead smiled down her mocking smile. Everything mocked me in this cruel land. How I hated it! How I hated the sun and moon and stars of it!
“If you will take me away from Africa!” I cried at last, hardly knowing what I said in my bitter pain.
“Yes—yes: I will do anything, everything you wish. We will marry and go away immediately afterwards. My uncle has great influence in diplomatic circles and can easily get me into the Consular service. We will go abroad and begin a splendid new life in some other land.”
“You offer me too much,” I said, “for I have nothing to give in return. Do you understand that, Maurice? I can only give you my services as a sister, a companion, some one who will make your interests hers, entertain your friends, help you in your career—”