‘Well now, we are quite sure of each other. Tell me plainly, do you think me capable of forsaking you because you have perhaps lost your money?’
The question made her wince. If delicacy had held her tongue, it had no control of HIS.
‘How can I answer that better,’ she said, ‘than by saying I love you?’
It was no answer, and Jasper, though obtuse compared with her, understood that it was none. But the emotion which had prompted his words was genuine enough. Her touch, the perfume of her passion, had their exalting effect upon him. He felt in all sincerity that to forsake her would be a baseness, revenged by the loss of such a wife.
‘There’s an uphill fight before me, that’s all,’ he said, ‘instead of the pretty smooth course I have been looking forward to. But I don’t fear it, Marian. I’m not the fellow to be beaten.
You shall be my wife, and you shall have as many luxuries as if you had brought me a fortune.’
‘Luxuries! Oh, how childish you seem to think me!’
‘Not a bit of it. Luxuries are a most important part of life. I had rather not live at all than never possess them. Let me give you a useful hint; if ever I seem to you to flag, just remind me of the difference between these lodgings and a richly furnished house. Just hint to me that So-and-so, the journalist, goes about in his carriage, and can give his wife a box at the theatre. Just ask me, casually, how I should like to run over to the Riviera when London fogs are thickest. You understand? That’s the way to keep me at it like a steam-engine.’
‘You are right. All those things enable one to live a better and fuller life. Oh, how cruel that I—that we are robbed in this way! You can have no idea how terrible a blow it was to me when I read that letter this morning.’
She was on the point of confessing that she had swooned, but something restrained her.