“Oh, how can you ask me?” she burst out, in a hoarse whisper. “Thinking as you do of me, why do you do it? It’s impossible that you can care for me, impossible that you mean what you say.”
The words, as she uttered them, sent shock after shock through him. At one moment her heart-rending tones made him feel smitten with remorse for doubting her; the next, a sort of shame, of humiliation in her voice revived his worst fears. He stood silent beside her for a space, unable to reply.
A smothered sob from her loosened his tongue. Keeping quite still, so that a person might have passed close to them without noticing how vital was the subject of their conversation, how deeply moved they both were, he said—
“How do you know what I think? Isn’t it enough for you that I tell you I love you, that I ask you to be my wife? Rachel you are miserable. You go and stay with these people, but you don’t care for them; you listen to this man, but you don’t like him, you never could like him. Why do you pretend to? Don’t tell me you mean to marry him: I know better. You don’t love him, and you don’t trust him: you can’t. But you’ve sometimes spoken, to me and to others, as if you did care a little for me. Won’t you give up this feverish, miserable life that you are leading? Won’t you be my wife, and rest and forget it all? You won’t make so much money as you are doing now. You won’t be able for a time at any rate, to wear such beautiful dresses as you do now; but you would be happier. I’m not very poor, and I love you, in spite of myself, in spite of—everything. Will you give it all up, and give up these dubious American people, and learn to be happy? I could teach you, Rachel, you know I could.”
She was moved, as she so easily was by his passionate attempts to solve the mystery of her life.
But she kept her self-control, and shook her head.
“Don’t ask me,” she said, in a tremulous whisper; “it’s of no use. I can only say one thing: no, no, no.”
“Why must you say that, if you feel that you would like to say something else, Rachel? Listen. I know you are acting under orders. I know you are leading a life you hate, and that you are doing it because you are under the influence of a will stronger than your own. I know that you wish you could break away from it, that you would give the world to be free. And I know that something stronger than yourself holds you down and binds you, and forces you into ways that torture you, and into a life that is a living tomb for all that is best in you. Rachel, Rachel, tear yourself away from it—break loose; say you will be free, and with my help you will be.”
His words had the most extraordinary effect upon the girl. At the first mention of the superior power that held her in bondage, a violent convulsion seemed to pass through her frame, and though she uttered no sound, he knew that the unexpected blow had struck home. Then she listened rigidly to the rest of his passionate speech, seeming to drink in his words with avidity, to find some painful, piteous pleasure in the expression of his belief, his entreaties. When he had let his voice die away and was waiting for her answer, she did not look at him, but he could hear her drawing her breath as if with difficulty, and he knew that she was going through a great, a pitiful struggle with herself.
He whispered again—