“I have known for some time that he would,” Gabrielle added, with the pleading look of a child in trouble who comes to an omnipotent elder.
“You told him——?”
“I—didn’t say no.”
There was a long pause while neither moved. A bird, unseen in the mist, croaked steadily, on a raucous note.
“You have promised him, Gabrielle?”
“No. I couldn’t do that. But—I couldn’t say no. I tried,” Gabrielle went on, in a sort of burst, and quite unconsciously clinging to David’s hands, “I did try to prevent it, David. You don’t know how I tried! He has been talking about it—oh, since before you went away! He told me he liked a girl, and he would tell me all about her, pretending that she was not I. I—prayed,” Gabrielle went on, passionately, “that it was not I!”
“Gabrielle, I would have spoken to him, saved you all this!”
“No, no, no, I know you would!” she said, feverishly. “Aunt Flora would have told him. But, David, we couldn’t have that! Why, it would have broken his heart! You see, he’s proud, and he feels—feels that there is—a difference between us and himself. He has been like a child about this, a child with a wonderful ‘surprise’ for me. I am to have jewels and travel and cars—everything.”
“If you marry him?” David asked, slowly.
“If I marry him. And I like him, David—ah, truly I do! I feel so badly for him. I feel as if it would be a real—a real life, for me,” persisted little Gabrielle, gallantly, feeling for words, “to fill Wastewater with guests and hospitality and happiness again. I can’t bear to have him feel that, poor as I am, and—and nameless—and he knows I am nameless!—still, I couldn’t love him. It will make him bitter, and ugly, and he’ll go off again, and perhaps die. I’ve had to be kind, to put anything definite off, and so I’ve said nothing to anybody—not even Sylvia. I’ve had to—to—fight it out alone,” finished Gabrielle, with a trembling lip and swimming eyes, “and it has made me—nervous!”