“To-day,” she said. “I do not care where it is, but I want you to take me away.”
“For how long? I do not understand,” gasped Dick.
“I shall never come back here any more,” was all she answered.
Wild words uttered, as these were, with perfect quiet of manner, exercise a double influence on the hearer’s mind. Dick was confounded; he recovered from astonishment only to fall into doubt and alarm. He looked upon her frozen attitude, so discouraging for a lover to behold, and recoiled from the thoughts which it suggested.
“To me?” he asked. “Are you coming to me, Esther?”
“I want you to take me away,” she repeated, with weary impatience. “Take me away—take me away from here.”
The situation was not sufficiently defined. Dick asked himself with concern whether she were altogether in her right wits. To take her away, to marry her, to work off his hands for her support, Dick was content to do all this; yet he required some show of love upon her part. He was not one of those tough-hided and small-hearted males who would marry their love at the point of the bayonet rather than not marry her at all. He desired that a woman should come to his arms with an attractive willingness, if not with ardour. And Esther’s bearing was more that of despair than that of love. It chilled him and taught him wisdom.
“Dearest,” he urged, “tell me what you wish, and you shall have it; tell me your thoughts, and then I can advise you. But to go from here without a plan, without forethought, in the heat of a moment, is madder than madness, and can help nothing. I am not speaking like a man, but I speak the truth; and I tell you again, the thing’s absurd, and wrong, and hurtful.”
She looked at him with a lowering, languid look of wrath.
“So you will not take me?” she said. “Well, I will go alone.”