Her simplicity, that once would have amused him, now had something in it that at once touched and alarmed him. There was a downright conviction in it, that argument, eloquence, passion even, would not be able to shake.
“And that, Mariposa,” he said, ardently, “is the way I love you.”
“That the way!” she echoed scornfully. “No—your way is to ask me to destroy myself, body and soul. You ask me to give you everything, while you give nothing. You say you love me, and yet you’re so ashamed of me and your love, that it would have to be a hateful secret thing, that you told lies about, and would expect me to tell lies about, too. I can’t understand how you can dare to call it love. I can’t understand. Oh, don’t talk about it any more. It’s all too horrible and cruel and false!”
Her words still further alarmed the man. He knew they were not those of a woman swayed by sentiment, far less by passion.
“That’s all true,” he said hastily, “that’s all true of what I said to you that night in the cottage. Now it’s different. Aren’t you large-hearted enough to forgive a man whose greatest weakness has been his infatuation for you? I was a ruffian and you an unsuspecting angel. Now I want to offer you the only kind of love that ever should be offered you. Will you be my wife?”
Mariposa started perceptibly. She turned and looked with amazed eyes into his face. He seemed another man from the one who had so bitterly humiliated her at their last interview. He was pale and in earnest.
“Will you?” he repeated.
“No,” she said with slow decisiveness, “I will not.”
“No?” he exclaimed, in loud-voiced incredulity and bending his head to look into her face. “No?”
“No,” she reiterated; “I said no.”