“What are you doing?” she asked, placing her hands on his shoulders and pushing him violently away.
“Well, you won’t marry me!” he protested. “What is a man to do if the girl he loves won’t marry him? It isn’t as though you don’t love me—you do: you know you do.”
“If I married you, I should starve,” she said; “or, at all events, I should have to work so hard that I should have no joy in you. Listen while I tell you something.”
And then in a very low voice she revealed her plan to him.
“I will be Marania’s wife, but you shall be my lover. We will meet in secret. And some of the money he gives me I will hand over to you.”
She spoke for a long time, her voice excited but very low, urging upon him the advantages of this scheme. She explained how he had everything to gain and nothing to lose, whilst she stood to lose everything.
“But if he found out!” interrupted Sobraji, “he would kill me! Surely he would kill me!”
Pabasca stirred angrily in his arms.
“You must risk that!” she said disgustedly, though she knew very well that Marania was too gentle, too long-suffering, and too profound a believer in Fate, to wish to kill any one.