"You sha'n't die!" he declared fiercely. "Who says you are going to die?"
Cynthia's eyes fell before the sudden fire that blazed at her from his. "Unless I consent to be a cripple all my days," she said, with a curious timidity wholly unlike her usual dainty confidence.
"Of course you will consent," West said, sweeping down her half-offered resistance with sheer, overmastering strength. "You'll face this thing like the brave woman you are. Good heavens! As if there were any choice!"
"There is," Cynthia whispered, looking at him shyly, through lowered lids. "There is a choice. But it rests with you. Mr. West, if you want me to do this thing—if you really want me to, and it's a big thing to do, even for you—I'll do it. There! I'll do it! I'll go on living like a chopped worm for your sake. But—but—you'll have to do something for me in return. Now I wonder if you can guess what I'm hinting at?"
West's face changed. The eagerness went out of it. Something of his habitual grimness of expression returned.
Yet his voice was full of tenderness when he spoke.
"Cynthia," he said very earnestly, "there is nothing on this earth that I will not do for you. But don't ask me to be the means of ruining you socially, of depriving you of all your friends, of degrading you to a position that would break your heart."
A glimmer of amusement flashed across Cynthia's drawn face.
"Oh!" she said, a little quiver in her voice. "You are funny, you men, dull as moles and blind as bats. My dear, there's only one person in this little universe who has the power to break my heart, and it isn't any fault of his that he didn't do it long ago. No, don't speak. There's nothing left for you to say. The petition is dismissed, but not the petitioner; so listen to me instead. I've a sentimental fancy to be able to have 'Mrs. Nat V. West' written on my tombstone in the event of my demise to-morrow. I want you to make arrangements for the same."
"Cynthia!"