“No, no, no!” he broke in. “I saw all that when I thought the matter out, after you left the camp that day. But at first I didn’t see it, and I didn’t want Dorothy sacrificed—especially to me.”
“No woman is sacrificed when she is permitted to share the work, the purposes, the aspirations of the man she loves. How men do misjudge women and misunderstand them! It is not ease, or wealth, or luxury that makes a woman happy—for many a woman is wretched with all these—it is love, and love never does its work so perfectly in a woman’s soul as when it demands sacrifice at her hands.”
Edmonia said this oracularly, as she sat staring into the fire. Arthur wondered where she had learned this truth, seeing that love had never come to her either to offer its rewards or to demand sacrifice at her hands. She caught his look and was instantly on her guard lest his shrewd gift of observation should penetrate her secret.
“You wonder how I know all this, Arthur,” she quickly added. “I see the question in your face. For answer I need only remind you that I am a woman, and a woman’s intuitions sometimes serve her as well as experience might. Go on, and tell me what it was you planned before I wrote you concerning Dorothy’s case. What was the particular excuse you invented at that time for running away?”
“It is of no consequence now, but I don’t mind telling you. I conceived the notion of freeing myself from the obligations that tie me here in Virginia by giving Wyanoke and all that pertains to it to Dorothy.”
“I almost wish you had proposed that to Dorothy. I should have been an interested witness of the scorn and anger which she would have visited upon your poor foolish head. It would have taken you five years to undo that mistake. But those five years would have been years of suffering to Dorothy; so on the whole I’m glad you didn’t make the suggestion. What spasm of returning reason restrained you from that crowning folly?”
“Your letter, of course. When you told me that those who had assumed the rôle of Special Providence to Dorothy had planned to marry her to that young Jackanapes—”
“Don’t call him contemptuous names, Arthur. He doesn’t need them as a label, and it only ruffles your temper. Go on with what you were saying.”
“Well, of course, you see how the case stood. Even if I had not cared for Dorothy in any but a friendly way, I should have felt it to be the very highest duty of my life to save her from this hideous thing. I decided instantly that whatever else might happen I would save Dorothy from this fate. So I have worked out a new plan, and I want you to help me carry it out.”
“Go on. You know you may count upon me.”