“I thought you'd give me a chance—a sort of chance—”
She stopped short on the avenue.
“You did?”
She had not been mistaken. The dog-cart had rounded the far-off curve and was coming toward them. And the man went on talking.
“You've felt every minute that I was in a place that didn't belong to me. You know that if the man that it did belong to was here, you'd be here with him. You felt as if I'd robbed him of it—and I'd robbed you. It was your home—yours. You hated me too much to think of anything else. Suppose—suppose there was a way I could give it back to you—make it your home again.”
His voice dropped and was rather unsteady. The fool, the gross, brutal, vulgar, hopeless fool! He thought this was the way to approach her, to lead her to listen to his proposal of marriage! Not for a second did she guess that they were talking at cross purposes. She did not know that as he kept himself steady under her contemptuousness he was thinking that Ann would have to own that he had been up against it hard and plenty while the thing was going on.
“I'm always up against it when I'm talking to you,” he said. “You get me rattled. There's things I want to talk about and ask you. Suppose you give me a chance, and let us start out by being sort of friends.”
“I am staying in your house,” she answered in a deadly voice, “and I cannot go away because my mother will not let me. You can force yourself upon me, if you choose, because I cannot help it; but understand once for all that I will not give you your ridiculous chance. And I will not utter one word to you when I can avoid it.”
He was silent for a moment and seemed to be thinking rather deeply. She realized now that he saw the nearing dog-cart.
“You won't. Then it's up to me,” he said. Then with a change of tone, he added, “I'll stop the cart and tell the man to drive you to the house. I'm not going to force myself on you, as you call it. It'd be no use. Perhaps it'll come all right in the end.”