He stopped, watching her.
"Well?" her eyes slanted sideways in a fixity of attention.
"Would you marry David? Then we could all go on together."
Her breath left her and she turned a frightened face on him.
"Why?" she gasped. "What for?"
He laid his hand on hers and said quietly:
"Because, as you say, the hardest part of the journey is yet to come, and I am—well—not a strong man any more. The trip hasn't done for me what I hoped. If by some mischance—if anything should happen to me—then I'd know you'd be taken care of, protected and watched over by some one who could be trusted, whose right it was to do that."
"Oh, no. Oh, no," she cried in a piercing note of protest. "I couldn't, I couldn't."
She made as if to rise, then sank back, drawn down by his grasping hand. He thought her reluctance natural, a girl's shrinking at the sudden intrusion of marriage into the pretty comedy of courtship.
"Susan, I would like it," he pleaded.