She said no more. The still pause lengthened. She forced herself to meet his eyes.
“I thought,” he said after a silent scrutiny, and left her to imagine what he had thought....
“But,” he urged to her protracted silence, “you care?”
She turned her face away. She looked at the hand lying idle upon her crape-covered knee. “You are my dearest friend,” she said very softly. “You are almost my only friend. But——. I can never go into marriage any more....”
“My dear,” he said, “the marriage you have known——.”
“No,” she said. “No sort of marriage.”
Mr. Brumley heaved a profound sigh.
“Before I had been a widow twenty-four hours, I began to realize that I was an escaped woman. It wasn’t the particular marriage.... It was any marriage.... All we women are tied. Most of us are willing to be tied perhaps, but only as people are willing to be tied to life-belts in a wreck—from fear from drowning. And now, I am just one of the free women, like the women who can earn large incomes, or the women who happen to own property. I’ve paid my penalties and my service is over.... I knew, of course, that you would ask me this. It isn’t that I don’t care for you, that I don’t love your company and your help—and the love and the kindness....”
“Only,” he said, “although it is the one thing I desire, although it is the one return you can make me——. But whatever I have done—I have done willingly....”
“My dear!” cried Mr. Brumley, breaking out abruptly at a fresh point, “I want you to marry me. I want you to be mine, to be my dear close companion, the care of my life, the beauty in my life.... I can’t frame sentences, my dear. You know, you know.... Since first I saw you, talked to you in this very garden....”