“Surely Millicent did not say that I had promised to marry her?”
Though Helen was not prepared for this downright plunge into an embarrassing discussion, she managed to evade a direct answer. “There was more than a suggestion of that in her words last night,” she said. “Perhaps she thought so in all seriousness. You seem to have undeceived her to-day, and I am sure you must have dealt with her kindly, or she would not have acknowledged her mistake in such frank terms to me. There, now! That is the end of a very disagreeable episode. Shall we say no more about it?”
Helen was flushed and hurried of speech: but she persevered bravely, hoping that Bower’s tact would not desert him at this crisis. She quickened her pace a little, with the air of one who has said the last word on a difficult topic and is anxious to forget it.
Bower overtook her. He grasped her shoulder almost roughly, and drew her round till she faced him. “You are trying to escape me, Helen!” he said hoarsely. “That is impossible. Someone must have told you what I said to Millicent in the hearing of all who chose to listen. Her amazing outburst forced from me an avowal that should have been made to you alone. Helen, I want you to be my wife. I love you better than all the world. I have my faults,—what man is flawless?—but I have the abiding virtue of loving you. I shall make your life happy, Helen. For God’s sake do not tell me that you are already promised to another!”
His eyes blazed into hers with a passion that was appalling in its intensity. She seemed to lose the power to speak or move. She looked up at him like a frightened child, who hears strange words that she does not comprehend. Thinking he had won her, he threw his arms about her and strained her fiercely to his breast. He strove to kiss away the tears that began to fall in piteous protest; but she bent her head as if in shame.
“Oh, please let me go!” she sobbed. “Please let me go! What have I done that you should treat me so cruelly.”
“Cruelly, Helen? How should I be cruel to you whom I hold so dear?”
Still he clasped her tightly, hardly knowing what he did in his transport of joy at the belief that she was his.
She struggled to free herself. She shrank from this physical contact with a strange repulsion. She felt as a timid animal must feel when some lord of the jungle pulls it down and drags it to his lair. Bower was kissing her cheeks, her forehead, her hair, finding a mad rapture in the fragrance of her skin. He crushed her in a close embrace that was almost suffocating.
“Oh, please let me go!” she wailed. “You frighten me. Let me go! How dare you!”