“Of course you will return to Kimberley?”
“I hardly think I shall,” replied Kate.
“Is there nothing that I can say that could induce you to return?” The doctor said this with an accent on the personal pronoun “I.”
Kate did not think for a moment that it meant anything more than gallantry, but something: in the tone of his voice made her look into his face. The doctor was looking at her in that manly way of his, and she answered his look, with one as sweetly womanly, but hesitated to frame any words, for the right ones would not come. Where now was Kate’s fluency of speech? He laid his hand over hers, resting passively in her lap, and said:
“Pardon me for revealing my feelings toward you. Don’t speak now. I cannot expect you to come to my quick conclusions in a matter like this. Kate, you are my ideal woman. Only that man who has daily before him his ideal for inspiration can hope to attain his highest manhood. When I make a farewell call upon you before my trip to England, tell me if I have gone farther than you can go with me.”
Kate sat in a twilight happiness and her lips were dumb. She could neither encourage nor deny. Her past was before her. She remembered the time when she had laid her young heart on the altar of an early love. Could it be possible she could find happiness in the love of another? Should she take into the joyousness of her existence, won by submission and an exalted spiritual life, a new relationship?
The doctor’s manner showed neither embarrassment nor anxiety. He had the assurance of a nature that knows what it wants—as the satisfaction of love, and that can say, “I want you for my wife. Come!” intending to take no denial. Then the woman, contented in his love, is willing to say, “I will love, honour, and obey,” for her yoke is the yoke of love, and her burden light, because she is evenly yoked. He was sure that he could make Kate Darcy happy. It should be her own fault if he did not. A vision of such a home as could be counted by thousands in his own happy land was before him. If this woman had drank of the elixir of life, she should by her companionship share her cup with him. By her own story she had grown younger with years. She should share her perfected youth with him.
This was a strange couple. Not a wand more of the mysteries of life and love escaped them. They talked as though they were henceforth sane on all subjects. The horses once more became swift. It is well that horses, if they can hear and comprehend, cannot talk.