The first thing she said to him was, “I am frightened.”
He took off his hat and laid it quietly on the divan by the side of his stick and then he turned and looking at her with his strange gray eyes, replied, “I too am frightened.”
Among the cheap furniture that crowded the room the old sense of his superiority returned to her, mingled this time with a new consciousness that he was utterly alien, stranger than she had ever imagined until now. She sat down quietly while he drew a chair to her side.
“I’ve talked to my mother,” he said. “Or rather she talked to me. She’s told me everything.”
Under the gaze of the gray eyes, Ellen turned aside, discomfited, wretched. “I wasn’t honest,” she murmured. “I’m sorry, but I hadn’t meant to be dishonest. I never thought it would make the least difference to any one.”
“It has made a difference though ... a great difference. It’s changed everything.” He reached over with a tenderness that suddenly weakened her and took one of her hands in his. She knew his hands; she knew them as she had known Clarence’s on the night in the Setons’ parlor when she had judged him nice enough but a bit of a prig. Callendar’s hands were slender, dark and strong, beautifully shaped in a way that made her fear them. When they approached her, she became weak; she felt that she was losing herself. She could not have explained the feeling save by a sense she had of their power. He was talking again, softly in the low voice with the thin trace of an accent, like Lily’s.
“I was foolish,” he was saying. “I should have known that the thing which made me afraid of you was the thing that would have kept you from taking a lover. I’d never encountered anything quite like it before.” He smiled and touched his mustache gently. “I was a fool. I should have known better. I thought perhaps you would love me some time ... not without a struggle. No, I never expected that. I thought we might understand each other....” For an instant the incredible happened. Callendar was blushing. It was a thing which she had not seen happen before. “I thought that one day we should come together.... I thought you were an artist, living as artists I have known do live. I was idiotic. I should have known better. You’ll forgive me that ... won’t you?”
For a moment she did not answer. The sound of his soft voice, the touch of the dark hands, had taken possession of her. Dimly she knew that she should have been insulted, yet she had no feeling at all, no sense of indignation; there was only a curious faintness that made her afraid. Somehow she understood that all this in reality had nothing to do with insults, with conventions, even with laws. It was something which might never again come her way and yet something which was to be feared, because it might destroy her forever. At last she said, “Why should I forgive you? It would make no difference now....”
“It would make a difference.... It would make a difference,” he said quickly. “I want you to marry me.... We can arrange everything. It makes no difference how.” And then after a sharp silence, he added in a low voice, “There is a magnificence about you, ... a bravery....” And the rest of the sentence trailed away so that she did not hear it.
Out of a great depth as if by a great physical effort she returned into the daylight. She found her lips moving. She found herself saying over and over again, “I must remember.... I must remember.... I must not ruin everything.” He had never even asked whether she loved him. He had accepted it as a fact. He had asked her nothing. He had come simply to take her.