"You don't have to marry me if you find out I'm a villain, or that you love somebody else better. But you do have to wear my ring for a while anyway. You're not going back home without it, I'll tell the world. Nobody is going to have a chance, not that dirty crook of a Keller anyway, to say that he threw you over. You're going home engaged to me, Marguerite Sheldon, whatever you do with me afterward, you may as well understand that I have the upper hand now, and you're going to have a ring, right now!
"You can take it for all the love I have in the world, if you're willing, or you can take it for just a means of protection for the time being if that suits you any better, but somehow I'm going to put my tag on my property. Until you've told me that you out and out can't love me ever, I'm out to see that you're known as belonging to me."
There was such quiet strength and tenderness in the way he said these words, so low that they could not possibly reach other ears than her own, so full of real feeling and earnestness, that she could not turn away from, nor laugh it off. It choked her to think how great and tender he was to her.
"Nelson, you're sorry for me and you're dear, but you don't need to go to such lengths," she began helplessly.
"Marguerite," he rebuked her, "that's beneath you. You know I never lie! You know I would not say it if it were not the dearest wish of my heart. You know I've loved you ever since I can remember."
She was still a long time, the sweet color coming into her cheeks; lifting she eyes at last she said:
"Nelson, forgive me I shouldn't have said that. I know what you've always been. But I didn't know till to-day quite how wonderful you were. I believe you, and I think it's the greatest thing in the world you have done for me. Your love is the greatest thing the world can ever give me, and I'm sure I don't know what I would ever be without you. I would tell you that I love you too, only I've been so many kinds of a fool the last year and a half that I don't even trust myself to say it. It seems cowardly of me to creep into the refuge you offer me, when I have so little to give. A threadbare love that was thrown away on an old married man with grown daughters!"
His face grew strangely tender.
"That's all right, little girl, I understand what you've been through. It's no wonder you distrust yourself, but I trust you, when you get rid of the mists and get back to yourself. We'll strike square with each other and you can trust me. I won't ask you to marry me till you're ready, and not then if you don't love me enough to be happy with me, better than any other man on earth—but I do ask you to wear my ring home and let it be a shelter to you, in any complex circumstances that this situation may happen to bring about."
She was still a long time, drawing little patterns with the tip of her spoon on the table cloth. At last she lifted hesitating eyes half shamed.