Wyllard stretched out his hands. “Then won’t you come to me?”
The blood swept into the girl’s face. For the moment she forgot Gregory, and was conscious only of an unreasoning impulse which prompted her to take the hands held out to her. She rose and faced Wyllard with burning cheeks.
“You know nothing of me,” she said. “Can you think that I would let you take me out of charity?”
“Again you’re wrong—on both points. As I once told you, I have sat for hours beside the fire beneath the pines or among the boulders with your picture for company. When I was worn out and despondent you encouraged me. You have been with me high up in the snow on the ranges, and through leagues of shadowy bush. That is not all. There were times when, as we drove the branch line up the gorge beneath the big divide, all one’s nature shrank from the monotony of brutal labor. The paydays came around, and opportunities were made for us to forget what we had borne, and had still to bear. Then you laid a restraining hand on me. I could not take your picture where you could not go. Is all that to count for nothing?”
He held out his arms to her. “As to the other question, can you get beyond the narrow point of view? We’re in a big, new country where the old barriers are down. We’re merely flesh and blood—red blood—and we speak as we feel. Admitting that I was sorry for you—I am—how does that tell against me—or you? There’s one thing only that counts at all—I want you.”
Agatha was stirred with an emotion that made her heart beat wildly. He had spoken with a force and passion that had nearly swept her away with it. The vigor of the new land throbbed in his voice, and, flinging aside all cramping restraints and conventions, he had claimed her as primitive man claimed primitive woman. Her whole being responded to his love and Gregory faded out of her mind; but there was, after all, pride in her, and she could not quite bring herself to look at life from his point of view. All her prejudices and her traditions were opposed to it. He had made a mistake when he had admitted that he was sorry for her. She did not want his compassion, and she shrank from the thought that she would marry him—for shelter. It brought to her a sudden, shameful confusion as she remembered the haste with which marriages were arranged on the prairie. Then, as the first unreasoning impulse which had almost compelled her to yield to him passed away, she reflected that it was scarcely two months since she had met him in England. It was intolerable that he should think that she would be willing to fall into his arms merely because he had held them out to her.
“It is a little difficult to get beyond one’s sense of what is fit,” she said. “You—I must say again—can’t know anything about me. You have woven fancies about that photograph, but you must recognize that I’m not the girl you have created out of your reveries. In all probability she is wholly unreal, unnatural, visionary.” Agatha contrived to smile, for she was recovering her composure. “Perhaps it is easy when one has imagination to endow a person with qualities and graces that could never belong to them. It must be easy”—though she was unconscious of it, there was a trace of bitterness in her voice—“because I know I could do it myself.”
Again the man held out his arms. “Then,” he said simply, “won’t you try? If you can only feel sure that the person has the qualities you admire it is possible that he could acquire one or two.”
Agatha drew back. “And I’ve changed ever so much since that photograph was taken!” she exclaimed with a catch in her voice.
Wyllard admitted it. “Yes,” he said, “I recognized that; you were a little immature then. I know that now—but all the graciousness and sweetness in you has grown and ripened. What is more, you have grown just as I seemed to know you would. I saw that clearly the day we met beside the stepping-stones. I would have asked you to marry me in England, only Gregory stood in the way.”