The girl felt her heart beating unpleasantly fast. It would have been a relief to assure herself that she was as fond of Gregory as she had been, but she could not do it.
"That," she said, "is a point on which I cannot answer you."
"We'll let it go at that. The fact that Gregory sent me over for you implied a certain obligation. How far events have cleared me of it I don't know—and you don't seem willing to tell me. But I fancy there is now less cause than there was for me to thrust my own wishes into the background, and, as I start in another week, the situation has forced my hand. I can't wait as I had meant to do, and it would be a vast relief to know that I had made your future safer than it is before I go. Will you marry me at the settlement the morning I start?"
Half-conscious, as she was, of the unselfishness which had prompted this suggestion, Agatha turned and faced him in hot anger.
"Can you suppose for a moment that I would agree to that?" she asked.
"Wait," said the man gravely. "Try to look at it quietly. First of all, I want you. You know that—though you have never shown me any tenderness, you can't doubt it—but I can't stay to win your liking. I must go away. Then, as things stand, your future is uncertain; and as my wife it would, at least, be safer. However badly the man I leave in charge of the Range may manage there would be something saved out of the wreck, and I would like to make that something yours. As I said, I may be away a year, perhaps eighteen months, and I may never come back. If I don't, the fact that you would bear my name could cause you no great trouble. It would lay no restraint on you in any way."
Agatha looked him steadily in the eyes, and spoke as she felt. "We can't contemplate your not coming back. It's unthinkable."
"Thank you," said Wyllard, still with the grave quietness she wondered at. "Then I'm not sure that my turning up again would greatly complicate the thing. There would, at least, be one way out of the difficulty. You wouldn't find the situation intolerable if I could make you fond of me."
The girl broke into a little, high-strung laugh that had a tinge of bitterness in it.
"Oh," she said, "aren't you taking too much for granted? Am I really to believe you are making this fantastic offer seriously? Do you suppose I would marry you—for your possessions?"