Lanyard shook his head, again possessed by the gravity of his purpose. "I am scarcely so childish," he said. "But for days—for months, indeed, but especially in these last few days—I have been thinking of the life I have to offer a wife, the life of a man hunted, without fortune or position, friendless in a strange land but for you."
"'Hunted'?"
The echo deprecated the strength of that term, but he would not modify it. "Hunted," he reiterated: "the life of an outlaw. Society does not forgive: it will sometimes applaud a successful transgressor, but it never has patience with the penitent."
"Tell me why you say that, Michael. I have the right to know."
"It is this, then," Lanyard said with reluctance: "wherever I go, I am a marked man. The world wears mocking eyebrows when it hears that the Lone Wolf no longer prowls. 'Perhaps, today,' it says: 'but wait. Let him prove his sincerity and fortitude against the dead drag of my indifference, let him make his way if he can, I have my own affairs to busy me.' . . . The police are satisfied my change of character is merely a blind. Another class, even more skeptic, is made up of those whose lot today is as mine was yesterday, creatures of envy, greed, and uncharitableness, all those qualities that make criminals. These, should they see me in rags, would say: 'Another turn or two of the screw and he will be one of us again.' Seeing me apparently prosperous, they say: 'Observe that he wants for nothing: he is cunning, that one.' Or suppose some unknown makes a famous coup; the chorus is then: 'The Lone Wolf has done this thing!' . . . Society indifferent, its police distrustful, its enemies envious: one needs strength to make way against so strong a tide!"
"You have it."
"But will it last?"
"With mine to comfort and encourage you when your strength wearies . . ."
"But figure to yourself a possible event: We marry. What happens? Your friends are affronted, they turn from you—"
"Did you call them friends?"