He turned away, not quite satisfied, and yet the feeling of what he had contemplated the day before was so coldly insistent that the revulsion urged him to cling to what she offered.
“It’s too much to ask,” he said, hesitating.
“You say that because you do not understand!” she cried, coming to him eagerly, her hand on his shoulder, standing behind him. “You don’t know all it means in my life to have the feeling of really counting.” She stopped as he turned, wondering if, at last, she was going to speak of herself. She wavered and then continued resolutely, “It’s all so useless—being alone—so starved! If you knew what it meant to me, to count, to give to some one, to fight for something, you wouldn’t talk of its being hard on me.”
He looked at her and wondered. He had known women like her before, women of the Northlands and the Old World who never complained, whose joy lay in sacrifice and redeeming. He thought of Pepita, the little Spanish model whose adoration he had not suspected until too late, and, thinking of Pepita, he wondered about Inga. What was the true feeling in her—as much as he would ever understand her? Did the girl love him? He wanted to believe it so keenly, in the weak reaction from the dread decision of the night, longing for something to cling to, that he hesitated, afraid to dissipate a fragile illusion by too brusque a question. Yet, if she did love him? At the very possibility, a new belief in himself awoke, bringing to him that sensation of life at its fullest in the power of inspiring love.
She saw the thronging, tumultuous thoughts which came crowding to his eyes, and nervously turned away. Her retreat frightened him, as such trivial symptoms can instill terror in moments of intense hope. He put his hands over his eyes to repress the too frank questioning in them, and walked to the window to regain his calm.
When he came back to her, determined to discuss matters rationally, he was conscious only of a longing to believe in her, to go forth into life and the sun once more. Yet he strove to be honest.
“This is all very well for now,” he said hurriedly, hardly trusting his voice, “but after—when we are calm, when we can see things as they are, when I face what is ahead, when you realize what you have bound your life to—a derelict—”
“And if I can make you what you were before,” she said, in simple faith.
“You can’t—men like me don’t come back,” he said bitterly, sinking into a chair. “It isn’t simply to live—that’s what you must understand. It’s—it’s to have the power to do what I used to do, and to do that, one must believe in oneself; only that is so hard—once you’ve lost it!”
“That is what I want, Mr. Dan,” she said impulsively. “I feel what there is in you. It comes to me just by your being in the room. I felt it that first night, even before you opened your eyes. I couldn’t help myself. I had to come to you to do what you wanted, to serve you. Do you think I’d have done that if you weren’t something big, something really worth while?”