“Lady Helen, will you marry me?” asked Nugent.
Polly, I gave such a start that the boat rocked, and I felt like a silly girl who never had been proposed to before. Moreover, I blushed scarlet. But, although I had, over and over, imagined his proposal, none of my conceptions had been anything like this. I had pictured him losing his head suddenly when we were walking alone in the woods, or keeping guard over the fire in the living-room at night. I had—well, there is no use going into details of what did not happen. Suffice it to say that the proposal was delivered in tersest English under a four o’clock sun, while he had an oar in each hand. And as I could not run away, and as he gave me not the slightest excuse to be angry there was nothing to do but to give him some sort of reply.
“To be perfectly honest, I don’t know,” I said.
“You mean that you are not sure that you love me, but that I may hope,” and his face turned as crimson as mine—no easy feat, for it is about the colour and consistency of leather.
“It is the sort of thing you can put in a good many different ways. And there is so much to be considered. You have the double magnetism of mind and sex, you always interest and never bore me, and you are entirely different from any one I have ever known. I am twenty-six, and like all women, eager to be in love—that I never have been makes my longing for that particular heritage the keener. Moreover, I am on the rebound from two years of cruel anxiety, days and nights of tears and waiting. For the first time I feel that I belong to myself once more, that the world and all its delights are mine—and you happen to be the only man. How it would be if I had met you in England in every-day conditions—that is the problem I cannot solve. These wild mountains, this life full of novelty, the novelty of everything—Oh, I don’t know.”
“Have you any prejudice against marrying an American?”
“No prejudice. That is not the word. It is—well, the very novelty that draws me to you is what I am most afraid of. You see—as I said—I never met any one in the least like you before. The men I have known, whether Englishmen or Europeans, are all men born of the same traditions as myself. Fundamentally they are the same, no matter what their individualities. But you—you are just as different fundamentally as every other way. How do I know but that your great attraction for me is partly the spell of your fascination, more still the novelty which appeals to my somewhat various mind?”
“You certainly have given the matter some thought,” he said, smiling with a sort of joyous sarcasm, but in his usual harsh abrupt tones. “I’ll debate the matter if you like. Your uncertainty of mind is due to the fact that you have gone fancy-free to the age of twenty-six. Unless a woman early acquires the habit of falling in love, it becomes more difficult every year—the disassociating of the mind from the emotions—the surrender of self—you struck me when I first saw you as being so implacably proud in your absolute self-ownership—it was delicious—I knew you never had kissed any man—when will you give me your answer?”
“When? Oh! Well—before—” brightening—“when Bertie is quite well.”
“Your brother is as good as well now. Soulé says there isn’t a microbe in him. The Adirondacks and common sense are all he wants. He has acquired both. Can you assert that you know it would be utterly impossible to love me?”