He looked formidable in the uncertain light.
She confronted him unflinching.
"Yes," she said, "you do. You calmly offer me marriage while you are firmly convinced that I don't care for you, and you are surprised—you actually dare to be surprised—when I refuse you. Those who offer insults must accept them."
"I intended none, as you well know," he said, drawing back a step. He felt his strength in him, but this slight woman, whom he could break with one hand, was stronger than he.
"Why should I marry you if I don't love you?" she went on. "Why, of course because you are Mr Vanbrunt, the greatest millionaire in England. Your choice has fallen on me. Let me accept with gratitude my brilliant fate, and if I don't actually dislike you, so much the better for both of us."
Stephen continued to look hard at her, but he said nothing. Her beauty astonished him.
"And what do we both lose," said Anne, "in such a marriage—you as well as I? Is it not the one chance, the one hope of a mutual love? Is it so small a thing in your eyes that you can cast the possibility from you of a love that will meet yours and not endure it, the possibility of a woman somewhere, who might be found for diligent seeking, who might walk into your life without seeking, who would love you as much as"—Anne's voice shook—"perhaps even more than you love her;—to whom you—you yourself—stern and grim as you seem to many—might be the whole world? Have you always been so busy making this dreadful money, which buys so much, that you have forgotten the things that money can't buy? No; no. Do not let us lock each other out from the only thing worth having in this hard world. We should be companions in misfortune."
She held out her hands to him with a sudden beautiful gesture, and smiled at him through her tears.
He took her hands in his large grasp, and in his small quick eyes there were tears too.
"We have both something to forgive each other," she said, trembling like a reed. "I have spoken harshly, and you unwisely. But the day will come when you will be grateful to me that I did not shut you out from the only love that could make you, of all men, really happy—the love that is returned."