“I’m going to ask you once more,” he said solemnly.
The evening was about them, and they stood in the obscurity, their faces but faintly visible to each other, and when their hands touched, they trembled.
“I cannot,” she said, turning away. “Wait! You remember that night when we met the child leading the drunkard? You remember what I said—about memories? Well, that was my life; I was that child. My father was that and more—more than you can imagine, more than I can tell. And my mother lived with him, suffering every insult, every horror you can imagine. She lived with him, because she hadn’t the courage to break away—because they had brought her up to believe that when she married she belonged to her husband, body and soul. I saw what marriage was then, and I saw my sister, too, bound and sold to a man she couldn’t care for—a man who had a little money—a good bargain—and I know what marriage was, to her. She told me—when she hoped she was going to die. I hate marriage! I hate a thing that can enslave and degrade women as though they were brutes and convicts. Now, don’t you see what it means to me to remain a free human being, just as free in the giving as before?”
He was silent, seeking to evoke out of the past the figure of the child that her words had thrown before his imagination, amazed at this revelation of a thinking woman. She, too, was silent a moment. Then she turned.
“Give me your hand,” she said proudly. “Listen, Mr. Dan: If I take you and you take me—just you and I, the only ones who count—can anything be more reverent, more sacred than as we are now?”
Still he did not answer, though he raised his eyes and looked at her profoundly. There was no confusion in her eyes, no hesitancy in the softness of her voice as she continued.
“I will go with you, I will never fail you, I will be happy to give whatever you ask of me. I will do this as long as you love me and need me. Won’t this mean anything to you, Mr. Dan—won’t this satisfy you?”
He shook his head. His face in the dusk was stern and gray, for he realized at last the gravity of the obstacle that lay between them. The very gentleness in his voice showed her how resolute he, too, was in his conviction.
“You may think one way, Inga dear,” he said gently; “I think another. I couldn’t love you if I did you this wrong. I couldn’t, for wrong it would be to me. If I can’t have you as my wife, I won’t have you at all.” He waited a moment, and then added slowly as though weighing each word: “Now I’m not going to be a coward and threaten to go to the dogs to play on your sympathies. You have given me more than I had a right to take, and I’m going to try and hold what we’ve won together. Only—I’ve got to fight it out alone.”
“What do you mean?” she said, putting out her hand as though to ward off a blow.