“Yes. What do you mean when you say that, if you had gone to the concert, it would not have been for the music; that if you had been there, I should have known of your presence, and a hundred other—impertinences?”
At first Roden thought that the way was being made easy for him as it is in books, as, indeed, it sometimes is in life, when it happens to be a way that is not worth the treading; but the last word stung him like a lash—as it was meant to sting. It was, perhaps, that one word that made him rise from his chair.
“If you meant to object to anything that I may say, you should have done so long ago,” he said. “Who was the first to speak at the hotel when I came to The Hague? Which of us was it that kept the friendship up and cultivated it? I am not blind. I could hardly be anything else, if I had failed to see what you have meant all along.”
“What have I meant all along?” she asked, with a strange little smile.
“Why, you have meant me to say such things as I have said, and perhaps more.”
“More—what can you mean?”
She looked at him still with a smile, which he did not understand. And, like many men, he allowed his vanity to explain things which his comprehension failed to elucidate.
“Well,” he said, after a moment's hesitation, “will you marry me? There!”
“No, Mr. Roden, I will not,” she answered promptly; and then suddenly her eyes flashed, at some recollection, perhaps—at some thought connected with her happy past contrasted with this sordid, ignoble present.
“You!” she cried. “Marry you!”