"If I married you, you would take me away from this country and these people who have killed her?"
She had the thought of another in her heart and the name of another upon her lips. But only her eyes spoke, travelling to that more distant grave where the butterflies were hovering above the flowers, as Saxham answered:
"I would take you away, if you wished it."
"To England?"
"Back to England."
"I should see London, and the house where Mother lived...." She seemed to have forgotten Saxham, and to be uttering her thoughts aloud. "I might even see the green mountains of Connemara in Ireland—her own mountains she used to call them. I might one day meet people who are of her blood and name——"
"And of his," thought Saxham, following her eyes' wistful journey to that other grave.
"But," she went on, "it would all depend"—she breathed with agitation and knitted her slim white fingers together, and looked round at him with that anxious wrinkle between her fine eyebrows—"upon how much you asked of me! Suppose I——" His intent and burning eyes confused her, and she dropped her own beneath them. "If I were to marry you, would you leave me absolutely free?"
"Absolutely," said Saxham. "With the most complete freedom a wife could possibly desire."
"I meant—a different kind of freedom from a wife's." She knitted and unknitted her hands. "It is difficult to explain. Would you be willing to ask nothing of me that a friend or a sister might not give? Would you be content——"