LVI
They were standing together in the same place two months later when he told her all, and asked her to be his wife in his own brusque characteristic way.
"You have been so good, so kind," she said, in rather formal phrase, but with her sweet eyes shining through tears and her sensitive lips trembling. "You have shown yourself to be so noble in your unselfish care for others, in your unsparing efforts for the good and benefit of everyone——"
"Put that by," said Saxham rather roughly, "and please to look at me, Miss Mildare."
He had never called her Lynette since her recovery, or touched the pretty hand he coveted unless in formal greeting.
"Put all that by. You see me to-day as you have seen me for months past, conscientious and cleanly, sober and sane, in body as in mind, discharging my duty at the Hospital and elsewhere as well as any other man possessing the special qualifications it demands. Pray understand that I am not a philanthropist, and have never posed as one. For the sake, first of a man who believed in me, and secondly of a woman whom I love—and you are she—I have done what I have."
He squared his great shoulders and stood up before her, and, though his face had never had any charm for her, its power went home to her and its passion thrilled.
"I play no part. The man I seem to be I am. But up to seven months ago, before the siege began, I was known in this town, and with reason, as the Dop Doctor."
He saw recollection waken in her eyes, and nerved himself to the sharp ordeal of changing it to repulsion and disgust.
"You have heard that name applied to me. It conveyed nothing loathsome to your innocent mind. You once repeated it to me, and were about to ask its meaning. I had it in my mind then to enlighten you, and for the mean and cowardly baseness that shrank from the exposure I have to pay now in the"—a muscle in his pale face twitched—"the exquisite pain it is to me to tell you to-day."