“I didn’t say anything about being free that I remember. It was you that said that.”
“I said I would set you free. I could not, of course, hold you to a bond you did not want——”
“But I did not say I did not want it. I said I would not hold you if you did not want to stay.”
“Do you mean that if you had known me a little—that is, just as much as you know me now—and had come in there and found out your mistake before it was too late, that you would have wanted to go on with it?”
She waited for his answer breathlessly.
“If you had known me just as much as you do now, and had looked up and seen that it was I and not George Hayne you were marrying, would you have wanted to go on and be married?”
Her cheeks grew rosy and her eyes confused.
“I asked you first,” she said, with just a flicker of a smile.
He caught the shimmer of light in her eyes, and came toward her eagerly, his own face all aglow now with a dawning understanding.
“Darling,” he said, “I can go farther than you have asked. From the first minute my eyes rested upon your face under that mist of white veil I wished with all my heart that I might have known you before any other man had found and won you. When you turned and looked at me with that deep sorrow in your eyes, you pledged me with every fibre of my being to fight for you. I was yours from that instant. And when your little hand was laid in mine, my heart went out in longing to have it stay in mine forever. I know now, as I did not understand then, that the real reason for my not doing something to make known my identity at that instant was not because I was afraid of any of the things that might happen, or any scene I might make, but because my heart was fighting for the right to keep what had been given me out of the unknown. You are my wife, by every law of heaven and earth, if your heart will but say yes. I love you, as I never knew a man could love, and yet if you do not want to stay with me I will set you free; but it is true that I should never be the same, for I am married to you in my heart, and always shall be. Darling, look up and answer my question now.”