“But I swear that it is not empty at all!” he urged, in earnest tones. “Who has a right to say that it is a dream? I am my own master—so are you. We are of age—we are intelligent people. I deliberately come to you, and say to you that you are the one woman on earth whom I desire with all my heart for my wife. I open my mind to you. There is only the image of you inside it. You know my sincerity. You must feel how supreme is the place you have in my thoughts. It is the logical end toward which I have been walking ever since I first saw you! You are all that there is of true friendship, of true womanhood, for me! I put out my hands to you, I pray to you! And why will you not come to me, dear, dear Frank?” There was a touch of pathos in the smile she gave him. “It isn’t the least bit of good, I assure you,” she made answer, in the confidential murmur that was necessary. “One can’t talk here—but please let us speak of something else. Or can we not go now?” He went on as if she had not spoken, his big, dark eyes challenging hers to an encounter which she evaded. “Do not think we need go away from England, if you want to stay; there will always be money enough—with your wisdom in controlling it. Perhaps we may even be able to restore Caermere. But if we are not, still it can be one of the noblest and most beautiful residences in England, when we learn together to understand its charm, and make it our home. Oh, when you see the magnificent hills and forests shutting it in on all sides—and the grim, fine old walls and towers of the castle itself! But there we need live only when we choose to do so—and whenever the mood comes to us, off we can roam to the Alps or Algiers, or the wonderful India which one always dreams of. And we shall sail in our own yacht and you shall be the queen there, as everywhere else. And all our lives we will spend in doing good to others: do you not see what extraordinary opportunities for helping those who need help you will have? Where now you are of service to one person, then you can assist a hundred! An army of grateful people will give thanks because of you—and I will always be the chief of them—your foremost slave, your most reverent worshiper! And then—think of the joy of a life in which no one has a share who is not pleasant and welcome to us! We will have no one near us who is not our friend. Oh, I have not told you: that is why, this very morning, I decided to leave it all, and to make a new life for myself, and to spend it wholly with my real friends. It is loneliness, heart and soul loneliness, that has driven me to revolt. And in my despair I come to you—and I say to you that it is friendship that I cannot live without, and you are my oldest friend, my dearest, truest, most precious friend, and I beg you to come with me and we will go through the world together, hand in hand——”
She interrupted him by pushing back her chair and half rising. “If you will excuse me now,” she said, nervously, “I think I must go. You mustn’t trouble to come—I will say good-bye here.”
He had risen as well, and now in trembling earnestness protested against her proposal. At the risk of attracting the attention of the strangers, he displayed such resentful opposition that she yielded. The waiter was summoned—and remained bowing in dazed meditation upon the magnitude of the change he had been bidden to keep for himself, after they had passed out and down the staircase.
She led the way at a hurried pace back across the Circus and to Blackfriars. At the rounded beginning of the Embankment she paused, and for the first time spoke. “Really I would rather go back by myself,” she told him. “It is only unhappiness to both of us—what you insist on talking about.”
“But I do not think it is to be treated in this way,” he declared with dignity. “If we speak of nothing else it is the highest and most solemn honor that a man can pay to any woman, that I have paid to you. I have the feeling that it should be more courteously dealt with.”
“Yes, I know,” she admitted, nodding her ready compunction. She tightened her lips and looked away from him toward the bridge, her brows drawn together in troubled lines. “I don’t say the right thing to you—I know that better even than you do. You must not think I fail to appreciate it all—the honor, and the immense confidence, and all the rest of it. But when I have said that much—then I don’t know in the least how to say the rest. Why can’t we leave it unsaid altogether? I assure you, in all seriousness, that it can’t be—and mayn’t we leave it like that? Please!”
He regarded her with a patient yet proud sadness, waiting to speak till she had turned, and his glance caught hers. “I do not wish to become a nuisance to you,” he said, his voice choking a little, “but I think it would be better if you said everything to me. Then I shall not put my mind on the rack, to try and imagine your reasons.” He let his lip curl with a lingering ironical perception of the fantastic with which his tragedy was veined. “It is very sweet,” he went on—“your consideration for my feelings. But I have heard so many plain truths to-day, I think my sensibilities are in good training now—they will not suffer for a few more.” Suddenly, as if the sound of his voice had unnerved him, he seized her arm, and confronted her surprised gaze with a reddened and scowling face. “What are you afraid of?” he demanded hoarsely. “Why not say it? I heard it only last night! It is forty years old, it is true, but they have wonderful memories in England. You are the one whom I have held to be my dearest friend—but go on! Say it to me! A little thing like friendship does not prevent you from thinking it! Why, then, you should have the courage to speak it out!”
Dimly, while she stared in his distracted countenance, the meaning, of the wild talk dawned upon her. With a startled exclamation, she dragged her arm from his clutch, and drew back a step. Trembling in her agitation, her gray eyes distended themselves out of all likeness to their tranquil habit.
“Oh-h-h!” she murmured in dismay at him, and wrung her hands. “Oh-h! Stop! Stop! That is too horrible for you to think!”
Gaining coherence of thought and purpose, she moved impulsively to him, and in turn clasped her hand upon his arm. “Put that out of your mind!” she adjured him. “I could not look anybody in the face if you thought that of me. Oh, it is too terrible of you! How could you suppose that I could harbor such a thought? To blame you for something years before you were born!—to throw it into your face. And me of all people! Why, I have cried to myself at remembering what you said about your father when we first met—how your little-boy memory clung affectionately to the soldier-figure of him in the door-way! Look at me—I cry now to think of it! Why, it is the one thing about you that is sacred to me!—the one thing that you are perfect in—and then you imagine that I am capable of insulting you about it! Oh, heavens, why wouldn’t you leave me when I told you to?”