"Well, I was just thinking that I was a fool to ask you to come with me, child." Marion opened her eyes in surprise. "You see, my dear," he went on, "we all make fools of ourselves sometimes. I started in life by making a fool of myself. I fell in love with a woman whom I thought perfection. She was an arrant flirt, and was only amusing herself with me till she hooked a young lord for whom she was angling. That was what sent me roaming for the first time; and, as you know, having once started I have kept it up ever since, that is till I came out here. I had intended to stay six months; I have been here three years. Why have I stopped so long? Simply, child, because I have again made a fool of myself. I do not think I was conscious of it for the first two years, and it was only when I saw, as I thought, that young Allen would win you, that I recognized that I, a man of thirty-seven, was fool enough to love a child just eighteen years younger than myself. At the same time I was not fool enough to think that I had the smallest chance. I could not stop here and watch another winning you, and at the same time I was so weak that I could not go away altogether; and so you see I compromised matters by going away for weeks and sometimes months at a time, returning with the expectation each time of hearing that it was settled. Now I hear that you have refused him, and, just as a drowning man grasps at a straw, I resolved to have my fate absolutely settled before I sail. Don't be afraid of saying 'no,' dear. I have never for a moment looked for any other answer, but I think that I would rather have the 'no' than go away without it, for in after years I might be fool enough to come to think that possibly, just possibly, the answer, had I asked the question, might have been 'yes.'"
He had stopped in his walk when he began to speak, and stood facing Marion, who had not raised her eyes while he was speaking. Then she looked frankly up in his face.
"Do you think I did not know," she said softly, "and didn't you really know too? You are not so wise a man as I thought you. Why, ever since I have known you it seems to me that—that—"
"That you have loved me, Marion; is it possible?" he said taking her hand.
"Of course it is possible," she said almost pettishly "how could I help it, I should like to know?"
Dinner had been waiting for some time before Mr. Atherton and his companion returned from their ramble.
"Twenty minutes late!" Wilfrid shouted as they approached the house; "have you been losing yourselves in the bush?"
"I think that it has been just the other way, Wilfrid," Mr. Atherton said as he came up to the group gathered in the verandah.
"How do you mean?" Wilfrid asked.
"I mean we have been finding each other."