"And you?" Deane murmured.
She laughed at him and looked away, but he was suddenly insistent, taking her hand, and forcing her to turn again towards him.
"Tell me," he said quietly, "do you really care for me, Olive? Oh! I know you care enough to justify you in marrying me, but I mean something different. I mean do you really care in the great fashion, you know, like the people one reads of,—like Iseult, and Amy Robsart, and those others?"
She looked at him as though he were speaking some foreign language. The earnestness in his face was unmistakable. She answered him with a perplexed little frown upon her forehead. "Ah, I wonder!" she murmured. "What a very strange question to ask me, Stirling, just now! Frankly, I don't know. I can only tell you that there is no other man. You are quite alone."
The others were all discussing some subject of kindred interest. Deane felt curiously prompted to continue his questioning. His engagement had been such a very matter-of-fact affair. To a certain extent it was understood that he was marrying for position, and she for wealth. And yet in all their conversations they had discreetly concealed the fact. They had told each other that they cared, if not with passion, at least in the most approved manner. There had been no suggestion in their many tête-à-têtes that they were about to embark upon a mariage de convenance.
"Tell me," Deane persisted, "if things should go wrong with me, or if you had met me simply as a struggler, with my feet upon the early rungs of the ladder,—tell me, could you have cared then, do you think?"
She looked at him curiously. There was something in his face which compelled the truth. "I do not know," she said. "Let me think."
"Think, by all means," he continued. "Remember that I was introduced to you, even, as one of the youngest millionaires. Forgive me if I seem egotistical, but I have a fancy to put things plainly. There is a glamour about wealth. I came to you with that glamour about my name. I am rich, of course, and wealth means power. How much of your affection, Olive, came out to the man, and how much to the millionaire?"
"You want me to give you a perfectly honest answer?" she asked.
"Absolutely," he assured her. "Don't be afraid of hurting my vanity. I want nothing but the truth."