Flood saw the change in her face, and knew that he was the cause of it. His heart beat triumphantly faster.
"Why did you say that you wonder at my liking—New York?" he asked.
She tried, vainly, to speak.
"You know what it represents, to me. It's something better than I ever had before. It's friends, it's music, and art, and the whirl on the Avenue. It is 'up and on'—and—Rosamund, don't you know what it is above all else? It is you."
He had meant to say a great deal, when this moment should have arrived; he had often wondered just how it would come, when he should find courage where they two should be. He had tried to teach himself the words he thought would be most sure to move her, words that would best disclose the fullness of his faith and his desire; yet now that the moment for speaking was upon him he reverted to the man that was his inmost self, forgetting his practiced phrases, not speaking the words he had rehearsed, but telling his longing in short, rushing sentences of pleading, voicing to her silence the cry of the strong soul to its chosen mate, the appeal, even the demand, of the man who had won a high place to the woman who could lead him up to even greater altitudes of the spirit. He pleaded as a man who has much to offer, but who is yet begging for the crowning gift. Unconsciously he disclosed his own greatness of soul, while making her understand that he held her supreme, beyond all that was beautiful, above all that was high.
Before he was done speaking, her head had bent itself until her face was on her knees. Never had she felt herself so unworthy; never had her humility been so great. Yet when he paused, she did not answer; even for his last strong appeal she had no word. He had shown her the depths of his heart, and hers was shaken to its own depths. But yield she could not, turn to him she could not. It was as if two great elemental forces met, and clashed, and refused to combine. She could not altogether repudiate his appeal, yet she must be true to the stronger one which held possession of her heart.
As he watched her in a silence that seemed still to vibrate with the strength of his words, she raised her head to look at the figures now coming toward them up the long slope. Suddenly she saw that Ogilvie stopped short, and, apparently at some word from Pendleton, looked up toward herself and Flood. He took a hesitating step or two, came on at a wave from Pendleton; then he turned away, leaving the others to return without him.
Some silent message had come up the mountain to her; Rosamund had found her answer to poor Flood. The others were out of sight for the moment behind a low growth of pine; only Ogilvie was visible as he made his way along the other ridge, taking his steps heavily, seeming suddenly to have become weary.
Rosamund watched him for a moment; then she turned her white face, pitiful with the knowledge of the hurt that she must give him, toward Flood. He must have read something there, for, startled, he bent a little closer; then, following her look, he glanced from her to Ogilvie, and back again. Her eyes did not waver from him, and when they had to answer the question in his, the paleness left her face, and a great wave of color flooded it. He held his breath, and his unspoken question must have become imperative; for she nodded, her parted lips refusing to form words. Then, withdrawing her look, she hid her face in her arms.
Neither of them ever realized that she spoke no word at all. Her reply had been too well-defined to need speech. Flood understood.