“Give me the hope that this may prove my return ticket to Paradise, and I am satisfied. Miss Berrington, you called me a coward yesterday, and you spoke the truth. I was, but I hope I am one no longer. I am young and reasonably ambitious. The world is before me. I shall begin where I began half-a-dozen years ago. I do not need your money.”
“I shall write you another cheque—you must accept it.”
“You dare not.”
“Why?”
“Because I am your guest, and I forbid you. The rules of hospitality, madam, extend even to the land of enchantment.”
“Is the guest so cruel, then”—there was a pathetic quaver in the voice—“as to leave his hostess to brood over this weight of obligation? Will he not thus, in the only possible way, lift that weight from her shoulders?”
“No!” cried John, coming swiftly round the table to her, “I shall lift her and the obligation together,” and, suiting the action to the word, he picked her up as if she were a child and seated her on the table before him. “I’ll not accept your cheque, but I ask you to accept me.”
For an instant her eyes blazed up as if lighted from within, then dulled again. She did not in the least resent his boisterous action, but she shook her head and said:
“I shall never marry a man who is not in love with me, and I am too insignificant a woman for any man to love me for myself.”
“Insignificant! Magnificent is the word! Why, Constance Berrington, you are the most beautiful woman I have ever seen. Your face makes every other in the world insipid. I’m not going to try and persuade you that I love you, because you know it. You knew it last night. You saw it in my eyes, and I saw the knowledge in yours. Curse the money! I’ll make all the money I need if I have you by my side. What is money, anyhow? I’ve made it and lost it, and I can make it again and lose it again. Constance, let us take that yacht, go to Duluth, and be married before a magistrate for ten dollars, like a lumberman and his girl.”