"It is a wide road and clear," he said jubilantly. "We are alone and we are merely drifting. The machine is alive with happiness. Rosalie—Rosalie, I could shout for joy! You do love me? You will be my wife?"
She was white and silent and faint with the joy of it all and the pain of it all. Joy in the full knowledge that he loved her and had spoken in spite of the cloud that enveloped her, pain in the certainty that she could not accept the sacrifice. For a long time she sat staring straight down the broad road over which they were rolling.
"Wicker, you must not ask me now," she said at last, bravely and earnestly. "It is sweet to know that you love me. It is life to me—yes, life, Wicker. But, don't you see? No, no! You must not expect it. You must not ask it. Don't, don't, dear!" she cried, drawing away as he leaned toward her, passion in his eyes, triumph in his face.
"But we love each other!" he cried. "What matters the rest? I want you—you!"
"Have you considered? Have you thought? I have, a thousand times, a thousand bitter thoughts. I cannot, I will not be your—your wife, Wicker, until—"
In vain he argued, pleaded, commanded. She was firm and she felt she was right if not just. Underneath it all lurked the fear, the dreadful fear that she may have been a child of love, the illegitimate offspring of passion. It was the weight that crushed her almost to lifelessness; it was the bar sinister.
"No, Wicker, I mean it," she said in the end resolutely. "Not until I can give you a name in exchange for your own."
"Your name shall one day be Bonner if I have to wreck the social system of the whole universe to uncover another one for you."
The automobile had been standing, by some extraordinary chance, in the cool shade of a great oak for ten minutes or more, but it was a wise, discreet old oak.