Walter came up to her, close to her, and put his hand upon the fleecy whiteness of her shawl, into which it seemed to sink as into snow.
“Will you tell me this?” he said. “You are one person to old Crockford, another to him, another to me. Which is you?”
A man who has been injured acquires an importance, a gravity, which no other circumstances can give him; and the tone of his misery was in Walter’s voice. He imposed upon her and subdued her in spite of herself. She shrunk a little away from him and began to cry.
“It is not my fault! I never asked you to notice me. I never pretended I was any one—not your equal—not—”
“Which is you?’ he said. Through the soft shawl he reached her arm at last, and grasped it firmly, yet with a weakening, a softening. How could he help it when he felt her in his power? Through her shawl, and through the mist of rage and bitterness about him, the quick-witted creature felt how the poor boy’s heart was touched, and began to melt at the contact of her arm.
“Which—is me? Oh,” she cried, “you don’t know me—you don’t know my circumstances, or you would not ask. You don’t know what I come from, nor how I have been surrounded all my life. It is the best that is me! It is, whatever you may think.”
Her arm quivered in his grasp; her slight figure seemed to vibrate so near to him. It appeared to his confused brain that her whole being swayed and wavered with the appeal he made to her. She lifted her face to his, and that too was quivering in every line. She was entirely in his power, to be shaken, to be annihilated at his will, and he had the power over her of right as well as of strength.
“The best—I don’t know which is the best. I came up to tell you—to ask you—to let you decide. And I find you with a man who—is going to marry you.”
“He thinks so, perhaps; but a man can’t marry one without one’s own consent.”
“Your consent! You seemed to agree to everything he said!” cried the young man in his rage. “A fellow like that! A cad—a—And I waiting here—waiting to see you—oh!” He flung her arm from him, almost throwing her off her balance. But when he saw her totter, compunction seized the unhappy boy. “You make me a brute!” he cried; “I’ve hurt you!” and felt as if, in the stillness of the night, and the despair of his heart, his voice sounded like a wild beast’s cry.