“You haven’t forgotten our last talk in Paris?” he began afresh, twisting awkwardly to the side of his chair. “I said when stock reached one twenty-five, I should be back here with a new proposition. The first of the month the figure for the main company was one twenty-six five eighths,—that’s the day I started. I got a cable this morning, and it hasn’t dropped since.”
The woman felt her breath taken away, as if a hurricane had come booming into the room full of dead air, in which she was living. Her pulses began to beat rapidly.
“That must be very gratifying to you.” Her words sounded to her needlessly flippant. They were like a blow in the face to a man who is taking a fence at one leap.
“Well, rather,” Wilbur gathered himself together undaunted. “I am a pretty rich man for a fellow who got his chance hardly a year ago. I guess I can get what money I want before I die. I bought up nearly half a township, up where father lives, and gave it to him just before I started, and built him a nice brick house with a French roof, turned the old house into a barn. That was gratifying to me. But what I came four thousand miles to talk about, wasn’t exactly this. You don’t remember, perhaps, that I said I should have another scheme to propose when you saw me next. It’s just this. Will you, will you,”—his voice broke a moment. Then as if ashamed of his weakness he cleared his throat and said distinctly,—“Will you marry me?”
She had known that his proposal was coming for the past three minutes. It occurred to her that she might have headed it off, but instead she had sat nervelessly, almost anxious to have the shock. Now that it had come, she was at a loss how to take it.
“How can I tell? I haven’t thought of it,” she found herself stammering.
“I know,” he replied disappointedly. “It didn’t seem quite right to mention it in my letters. But you see we have worked along shoulder to shoulder, like real partners, through the first big crisis I have had. And I have learned to know you so well and trust you, if you haven’t me. I feel that marriage would be a closer partnership, longer you know, and more intimate. Of course you are bigger as a woman than I am as a man, have broader interests, but I must get those too, and I can—with you. What I want first and most is you. We two can work together.”
Then he stopped with unexpected tact, just as his attitude showed unexpected humility. He urged no more, but sat quietly while she thought with desperate swiftness. Of course her feeling about it ought to be spontaneous and instinctive,—novelists and poets made it out so in every case. She should be able to say yes or no on the spot. But the experience did not come to her in quite that way: she felt enormously drawn to the man, and more than ever from the form in which he had put his offer. A partnership, stronger and deeper in meaning than mere business, yet two-headed and two-working, with absolute trust and confidence on either side—wasn’t that rational and ideal? And that would mean freedom. His every act indicated freedom, a large, hopeful way of life, full of plans and the realizing of plans by constant, swift, clever calculation. How much more vital that, than the dead groping into one’s interior self after expression or some faint representation of that inadequate self,—called art! It is better to live than to paint, some one said; it is best to make life your art.
Freedom! The very word had an impelling charm; freedom from this endless division of herself that present conditions imposed. How much Mrs. Anthon and Aix-les-Bains had to do with her decision it would be hard to say. For at last, as the still moments escaped while she faltered there before the intent man, all logical thoughts fled, and in their place came confused longings and impulses.
Wilbur rose and walked slowly over to the fireplace.