"Rona," he said at last. "Rona, I ought not to let you. I am not a fit man for you to love!"
"You are the man that saved me," said Rona, clinging to him. "How strange it seems. I never thought of you as a young man, somehow, until I saw you sitting here with such a sad, grave face."
"And I," said Felix, with a depth of wonder that was almost stupefaction—"I actually never knew that you were beautiful until this evening. But now I know. I see everything with a new clearness. I am a man, and you are going to be a woman in a year or two. And I want you for my wife."
She was silent, hushed with a new awe. "For your wife? Oh, David!"
"Will you?" he urged, beseeching her with eyes and hands and voice. "Will you promise that, if I can make a home for you, you will come and live in it? Will you give me something to work for, something to keep me from despair? Oh, Rona, I ought not to ask it! How can I be mad enough to ask it?"
"But of course I shall promise, if you wish it," said the girl, in her youth and immaturity eager to promise she knew not what, eager to give joy to the being who, apparently, depended upon her for all his hopes in life.
Even at the moment, even holding her against his heart, and feasting his famished nature with the sweetness of her womanhood and the brilliancy of his new hopes, her dutiful words, emphatic though they were, sent a chill through him. In spite of his inexperience, there is an insight which love gives; and he knew that Rona did not love him, but was merely willing that he should love her. She was not grown up, he told himself. When she came to be completely a woman she would love, as he now loved, with that surrender which to him was so new, so unexampled a sensation. It was long before he could calm down the turbulence of his emotions to anything like a consideration of the situation. But their time was short, and after ten minutes of more or less incoherent bliss and shy caresses, he began to explain to Rona some of his thoughts and plans. Now that they understood each other, these were far more easily explained than he had thought possible.
It appeared that the girl had not been informed of the extent of the benevolent intentions of the Squire and Miss Rawson on her behalf.
But she was quite sensible enough to understand that, as she and David were not really brother and sister, but desired another sort of relationship, it would not be fitting for them to travel about together, until the time came when they could be husband and wife.
Felix explained to her, fully and with care, the good prospect opened out to him by the patronage of Vronsky. He was also able to make her see clearly that it was dangerous for him to stay in England, seeing that the police supposed him to be dead.