“What can I say?” she began in a low voice. “You are noble and good, Code, and I know what has actuated you to say this to me. Some women would be resentful at your offer, but I am not. A week ago, even yesterday, I should have accepted it gladly and humbly, but to-day––no.
“Since last night I have thought, and somehow things have come clearer to me. I have tried to do too much. I have always loved you, Code, but 301 I can see now that you were not meant for me. I tried to win you because of that love, not considering you or others––only myself. And I defeated my own end. I overshot the mark.”
“I don’t understand,” said Code.
“Perhaps not, but I will tell you. In the first place, I deliberately managed so that Nat Burns and Nellie could never be married. I know now that they have separated for good. I hated Burns for his part in my sister’s life, and I resolved to wreck his happiness if his engagement to Nellie was happiness. So now she is free and you can have her, I think, for the asking.”
“But,” cried Schofield in protest, “I have never said––”
“You did not need to say that you loved some one,” she told him, with a faint smile. “That night at dinner on the schooner with me proved it. I have talked to your mother since I came home, and she told me what Nat’s engagement meant to you, so that I know Nellie is the girl you have always loved. Isn’t it so?”
“Yes,” he replied gently.
“Now is it plain to you how I have undone my own plans? Two things I desired more than anything else on earth, you, and Burns’s ruin. I ruined Burns and paved the way for the loss of you, for, unscrupulous as I am in some things, I could never 302 marry you when Nellie was free and you loved her. I have wanted happiness so hard, Code, that when I see others who have it within their grasp, I cannot stand in their way.
“But I don’t mind now––I really don’t. That was all in the past, and it’s over now. If you want to make me happy, be happy yourself. I see there are forces that guide our lives that must have their will whatever our own private plans may be, and, having learned that lesson, I feel that perhaps now I shall be happier, somehow, than I ever would have been if my own selfishness had triumphed.”
Code lifted her hand to his lips and kissed it.