"Only what? Surely you are not one of the men who grudge women the chance to prove what is in them—who would treat us like china dolls and circumscribe us by conventions? I know you are not, because I have heard you inveigh against that very sort of narrow mindedness. Only what?"
"I can't make up my mind to it. And I suppose the reason is that it means so much to me—that you mean so much to me. What is the use of my dodging the truth, Selma—seeking to conceal it because such a short time has elapsed since you ceased to be a wife? Forgive me if I hurt you, if it seem indelicate to speak of love at the very moment when you are happy in your liberty. I can't help it; it's my nature to speak openly. And there's no bar now. The fact that you are free makes clear to me what I have not dared to countenance before, that you are the one woman in the world for me—the woman I have dreamed of—and longed to meet—the woman whose influence has blessed me already, and without whom I shall lack the greatest happiness which life can give. Selma, I love you—I adore you."
Selma listened with greedy ears, which she could scarcely believe. It seemed to her that she was in dream-land, so unexpected, yet entrancing, was his avowal. She had been vaguely aware that he admired her more than he had allowed himself to disclose, and conscious, too, that his presence was agreeable to her; but in an instant now she recognized that this was love—the love she had sought, the love she had yearned to inspire and to feel. Compared with it, Babcock's clumsy ecstasy and her own sufferance of it had been a sham and a delusion. Of so much she was conscious in a twinkling, and yet what she deemed proper self-respect restrained her from casting herself into his arms. It was, indeed, soon, and she had been happy in her liberty. At least, she had supposed herself so; and she owed it to her own plans and hopes not to act hastily, though she knew what she intended to do. She had been lonely, yes starving, for lack of true companionship, and here was the soul which would be a true mate to hers.
They were sitting on a grassy bank. He was bending toward her with clasped hands, a picture of fervor. She could see him out of the corner of her glance, though she looked into space with her gaze of seraphic worry. Yet her lips were ready to lend themselves to a smile of blissful satisfaction and her eyes to fill with the melting mood of the thought that at last happiness had come to her.
The silence was very brief, but Littleton, as would have seemed fitting to her, feared lest she were shocked.
"I distress you," he said. "Forgive me. Listen—will you listen?" Selma was glad to listen. The words of love, such love as this, were delicious, and she felt she owed it to herself not to be won too easily. "I am listening," she answered softly with the voice of one face to face with an array of doubts.
"Before I met you, Selma, woman but was a name to me. My life brought me little into contact with them, except my dear sister, and I had no temptation to regret that I could not support a wife. Yet I dreamed of woman and of love and of a joy which might some day come to me if I could meet one who fulfilled my ideal of what a true woman should be. So I dreamed until I met you. The first time I saw you, Selma, I knew in my heart that you were a woman whom I could love. Perhaps I should have recognized more clearly as time went on that you were more to me even then than I had a right to allow; yet I call heaven to witness that I did not, by word or sign, do a wrong to him who has done such a cruel wrong to you."
"Never by word or sign," echoed Selma solemnly. The bare suggestion that Babcock had cause to complain of either of them seemed to her preposterous. Yet she was saying to herself that it was easy to perceive that he had loved her from the first.
"And since I love you with all my soul must I—should I in justice to myself—to my own hopes of happiness, refrain from speaking merely because you have so recently been divorced? I must speak—I am speaking. It is too soon, I dare say, for you to be willing to think of marriage again—but I offer you the love and protection of a husband. My means are small, but I am able now to support a wife in decent comfort. Selma, give me some hope. Tell me, that in time you may be willing to trust yourself to my love. You wish to work—to distinguish yourself. Would I be a hindrance to that? Indeed, you must know that I would do every thing in my power to promote your desire to be of service to the world."
The time for her smile and her tears had come. He had argued his case and her own, and it was clear to her mind that delay would be futile. Since happiness was at hand, why not grasp it? As for her work, he need not interfere with that. And, after all, now that she had tried it, was she so sure that newspaper work—hack work, such as she was pursuing, was what she wished? As a wife, re-established in the security of a home, she could pick and choose her method of expression. Perhaps, indeed, it would not be writing, except occasionally. Was not New York a wide, fruitful field, for a reforming social influence? She saw herself in her mind's eye a leader of movements and of progress. And that with a man she loved—yes, adored even as he adored her.