“I want to say to you something that is—that is very serious—for us both, Luke,—I want to tell you,——”
Her voice once more died away, in the same inarticulate and curious gurgle, like the sob of water running under a weir.
Luke rose to his feet and stood in front of her. “It’s all right,” he said calmly. “You needn’t agitate yourself. I understand.”
The girl covered her face with her hands. “But what shall I do? What shall I do?” she sobbed. “I can’t marry Ralph like this. He’ll kill me when he finds out. I’m so afraid of him, Luke—you don’t know,—you don’t know,—”
“He’ll forgive you,” answered the stone-carver quietly. “He’s not a person to burst out like that. Lots of people have to confess these little things after they’re married. Some men aren’t half so particular as you girls think.”
Gladys raised her head and gave her friend a long queer look, the full import of which was concealed from him in the darkness. She made a futile little groping movement with her hand.
“Luke,” she whispered, “I must just say this to you even if it makes you angry. I shouldn’t be happy afterwards—whatever happens—if I didn’t say it. I want you to know that I’m ready, if you wish, if—if you love me enough for that, Luke,—to go away with you anywhere! I feel it isn’t as it used to be. I feel everything’s different. But I want you to know,—to know without any mistake—that I’d go at once—willingly—wherever you took me!
“It’s not that I’m begging you to marry me,” she wailed, “it’s only that I love you, love you and want you so frightfully, my darling!
“I wouldn’t worry you, Luke,” she added, in a low, pitiful little voice, that seemed to emerge rather from the general shadowiness of the place than from a human being’s lips, “I wouldn’t tease you, or scold you when you enjoyed yourself! It’s only that I want to be with you, that I want to be near you. I never thought it would come to this. I thought—” Her voice died away again into the darkness.