"Yes."
Her eyes were lowered again, this time with some of the life gone from them. A shadow crossed her face.
"David," she said, "I trust you, I know you are staunch and true. But, dear, are you considering well? Are you sure that you will never regret—this? No, don't speak yet, please. We must be frank with each other. I am not a silly, romantic girl, believe me. I have faced and can still face the real things of life. You are not driving yourself to forget or to overlook all the conditions that surround me, are you? I was a rider. My father was a rider. Oh, you are going to say that my mother was different. But what has that to do with it? What does it matter that she has brought me here, to this home of plenty and of respectability and—well, let us say it, of position. I am the granddaughter of Albert Portman. That may stand for something—yes, it does stand for a great deal. But do not forget, David, dear, that I am the daughter of Tom Braddock. I am the granddaughter of old Stephen Braddock, who was a—a—"
"Don't say it, dearest! Why should you be saying all this to me? You, an angel among—"
"I must, David," she went on resolutely. "You have come here to ask me to be your wife—to hold me to a promise. You must think all this out in time, David. Please don't laugh in that scornful way. It hurts. I am very serious. Your friends, your people, will welcome me gladly as the granddaughter of Albert Portman, but will they take me, can they accept me, as the granddaughter of Stephen Braddock? As the product of a fashionable convent they may rejoice in me, but as the pupil of the sawdust ring,—as Little Starbright, a thing of spangles! Ah! How about that side of me? Who were my childhood friends and associates? Don't misjudge me. I loved them all—I love them now. They were the best friends and the truest. But could they ever be the friends of your friends?"
"They are my friends," he said simply, struck by her earnestness. "Are you forgetting what they meant to me in the old days? And what was I? A fugitive with a price on my head. A—"
"Ah, but you were different—you always had been different. You were a Jenison. What are you going to say when some one—and there always will be the miserable some one—reminds you that he saw your wife when she was Little Starbright? What—"
"Don't look so miserable, Christine! If any one says that to me I shall congratulate him."
"Congrat—Oh, do be serious! It doesn't matter what I am to-day, David; it's what I was such a little while ago. I am not trying to belittle myself. I am proud of what I am. Don't misunderstand me. I am a Portman! Her blood is in me—her mind, her soul. But I am not all Portman. Suppose, David—suppose that my father were to come back some day. We know what he is—what he was. Perhaps the world may have forgotten, but suppose that he reminds the world of the fact that he is my father—"
"Christine! You are working yourself into a dreadful state over all this—"