“That has nothing to do with us,” she said coldly.
“Well, then what?” he said frantically. “At first, I thought you believed it was only out of gratitude.” He caught a look in her face and checked himself. “Inga, you do believe that. Good Heavens, don’t you know, don’t you understand how I have felt all these weeks, that if I have held myself in it was because I wouldn’t bind you, until—until I knew there was something to offer you in exchange—something more than a derelict, a derelict that was going under? But, child, don’t you know what I am, and don’t you know what you are—how I long for you and need you? Don’t you realize what you mean to me, to have you here close at my side, so young, so gentle, so strong! Haven’t you seen my eyes following you, craving your young loveliness? Haven’t you felt how my arms have longed to go out to you, to hold you to me? You mean everything to me—the end of a nightmare, the birth of a new day! And you could think that I’ve asked you to marry me out of gratitude! Inga, Inga; any man would be mad in love with you!”
He had ended turbulently, his hand on her shoulder. She looked at him long and penetratingly, as though plunging through the barriers that blocked the way to the truth that lay in his heart, the truth of the moment and the truth of to-morrow. This scrutiny lasted so long that he was on the point of breaking out again when she checked him with her hand.
“Yes; I believe that you love me,” she said gently, almost as though she were reassuring herself. She added with the same low, soothing melody in her voice that his ear had learned to crave, “And I, too—I love you.”
She pronounced this so solemnly that it sounded to him not like a surrender but as a farewell.
“And yet you won’t marry me,” he said, divining what lay behind.
“That is not necessary,” she said deliberately, “that is, marriage—your form of marriage.”
He turned like a flash and stood looking at her, his hands on his hips, open-mouthed.
“This is what I want you to understand,” she said quite naturally. “What you must understand. Will you hear me and try to see my point? I have sworn that I would never marry. I can’t—everything in me is against it. I can’t, I won’t acknowledge that any one or any system can force me to give myself to any man unless I love him, unless it is my wish to remain with him. How do I know whether you will always love me, always need me in your life? How do I know that I shall always want to be with you?”