"I like you. No—keep quiet, Charley, please, you'll upset the boat. Of course I like you—aren't you my cousin—haven't you been awfully kind—don't I owe all this to you? Charley, I bless that night in the snow—it has been the luckiest in my life."
"And the unluckiest of mine."
"Sir!"
"O Edith, let us speak for once—let us understand one another, and then part forever, if we must. Only why need we part at all?"
She turns pale—she averts her face from him, and looks out over the radiant water. Sooner or later she has known this must come—it has come to-night.
"Why need we part at all?" He is leaning on his oars, and they are floating rightly with the stream. "I don't need to tell you how I love you; you know it well enough; and I think—I hope—you care for me. Be true to yourself, Edith—you belong to me—come to me; be my wife."
There is passion in his tone, in his eyes, but his voice is quiet, and he sits with the oars in his hands. Even in this supreme moment of his life Mr. Stuart is true to his "principles," and will make no scene.
"You know I love you," he repeats, "as the man in the Cork theatre said the other night: 'I'll go down on my knees if you like, but I can love you just as well standing up.' Edith, speak to me. How can you ever marry any one but me—but me, whose life you saved. My darling, forget your cynicism—it is but lip-deep—you don't really mean it—and say you will be my wife."
"Your wife!" She laughs, but her heart thrills as she says it. "Your wife! It would be pleasant, Charley; but, like most of the pleasant things of life, it can never be."
"Edith!"