Elizabeth looked up quickly and spoke quickly, because she knew that if she stopped to think she would not speak at all.
“And if we were married?”
“Then it would be different,” said David Blake.
His voice was not like his usual voice. It sounded like the voice of a man who was puzzled, who was trying to recall something of which he has seen glimpses. Was it something from the past, or something from the future?
Elizabeth got up and stood as he was standing—one hand on the oak shelf above the fireplace the other clenched at her side.
“David, are you asking me to marry you?” she said.
He raised his head, half startled. The silence that followed her question seemed to fill the room and shake it. His will shook too, drawn this way and that by forces that were above and beyond them both.
Elizabeth did not look at him. She did not know what he would answer, and all their lives hung on that answer of his. She held her breath, and it seemed to her that she was holding her will too. She was suddenly, overpoweringly conscious of her own strength, her own vital force and power. If she let this force go out to David now—in his weakness! It was the greatest temptation that she had ever known, and, after one shuddering moment, she turned from it in horror. She kept her will, her strength, her vital powers in a strong grip. No influence of hers must touch or sway him now. Her heart stopped beating. Her very life seemed to be suspended. Then she heard David say:
“Would you marry me, Elizabeth?” His tone was a wondering one. It broke the tension. She turned her head a little and said:
“Yes—if you needed me.”