“But I wish—well, impossibilities.”
“What? Tell me, Jack. I shall understand.”
“Oh—nothing. Only I wish I could find some way of proving it to you. But people always say that sort of thing. We don’t live in the middle ages.”
“I believe we do,” answered Katharine, thoughtfully. “I believe people will say that we did, hundreds of years hence, when they write about us. Besides—Jack—not that I want any proof, because I believe you—but there is something you could do, if you would. I know you wouldn’t like to do it.”
It flashed across Ralston’s mind that she was about to ask him to make a great sacrifice for her, to give up wine for her sake, having heard, perhaps—even probably—of some of his excesses. He was nervous, overwrought and full of wild impulses that day, but he knew what such a promise would mean in his simple code. He was not in any true sense degraded, beyond the weakening of his will. In an instant so brief that Katharine did not notice his hesitation he reviewed his whole life, so familiar to him in its worse light that it rose instantaneously before him as a complete picture. He felt positively sure of what she was about to ask him, and as he looked into her great grey eyes he believed that he could keep the pledge he was about to give her, that it would save him from destruction, and that he should thus owe his happiness to her more wholly than ever.
“I’ll do it,” he answered, and the fingers of his right hand slowly closed till his fist was clenched.
“Thank you, dear one,” answered Katharine, softly. “But you mustn’t promise until you know what it is.”
“I know what I’ve said.”
“But I won’t let you promise. You wouldn’t forgive me—you’d think that I had caught you—that it was a trap—all sorts of things.”
Ralston smiled and shook his head. He felt quite sure of her and of himself. And it would have been better for her and for him, if she had asked what he expected.