“Neither do I,” he answered, with his hand still on my hair. “It was unworthy of me, but I rather enjoyed it, after all, for I liked to hear you talk of Nicol, knowing I was he. And now, can you forgive the past, and think of me as you used to do? I will try to make you very happy—not in Russia,” he said, quickly, as he saw me about to speak. “Whether you marry me or not, I shall leave the country and go to America. Many predict trouble for Russia in the future. There is unrest everywhere, and treachery. You don’t know whom to trust. Every servant of mine is a nihilist, and Zaidee the worst of all. But mother never suspected it. If she had, she would have flayed them alive, if she could. I am tired of it, and shall go to a free country, where, as Carl Zimosky once said, one can sneeze without being made to tell why he did so. And, if I come to Ridgefield some day, will you be my wife?”
Every word he said was telling upon me, for there was a wonderful magnetism about him, and I felt much as I did when he came to me under the maple tree to say good-by. That was years ago, when I was young, and it seemed ridiculous that people of our age should be making love, and I said so.
“Why not?” he answered. “I am fifty, and you are forty, and look thirty. You see, I have kept your age, and I know no reason why middle-aged people should not be in love as well as young ones, especially when the germs have been maturing for years, as mine have for you. Can I come to Ridgefield? Will you be my wife?”
He was very persistent, and repeated his question till I answered: “You can come to Ridgefield, and I will think of it, and, like Zaidee, see if it will do.”
“Then you are mine,” he said, kissing my hands passionately. “I’ll not kiss your face,” he added, “till some of my beard is off, and I am more like the Nicol you knew.”
It was late when he left, and two or three times he turned back from the door to kiss my hands and say good-night.
The next evening the cards of Mr. and Miss Scholaskie were brought to me, and, after a few moments, a young man, faultlessly attired, was offering me his hand and asking if I knew him. I should never have recognized him as the girl I had seen arrested, or the old woman who had cleaned my hearth and dusted my chairs. He was in high spirits, and said he shouted aloud when he dropped off Alex’s disguise and felt he was a man again.
“Free, free,” he kept repeating, until I asked if there were no danger of his being inquired for.
Then, for a moment, a shadow darkened his face; but he soon brightened, and replied: “I think not, and so does Seguin. He is a brick, as you Americans say. He is going to America later on, he said.”
I felt my cheeks burn, and wondered if he knew what had passed between Michel and myself. If he did, he gave no sign, but asked how soon we expected to sail, and if it was from Havre. I told him, and he continued: “I shall secure my passage to-morrow. Then I shall run over to London to say good-by to my grandmother. You have seen the old lady, and can judge the time I’ll have with her. She will dislike my going to America to become a citizen nearly as much as she disliked my being a nihilist. Mais n’importe. I am going, just the same.”