"You do know that I can't; don't you? And that you cannot really love me?"
"I suppose it ought to be that way; but it isn't."
And now the moment had come to make her desire a certainty—and finish what she had set herself to do—for this man's sake. She said:
"You can't care for me, Jim! What am I anyway? A shallow, pleasure-loving nobody, who sells her frivolous social gifts because it is pleasanter and easier to make a living that way than to exercise a decent profession. How can such a man as you really fall in love with such a woman?"
She rose to her feet and stood leaning against the tree; and he rose, too, releasing her fingers.
She touched her hair, passed her hands slowly over her eyes, let them fall idly by her side; then, after a moment, looked up at him, faintly smiling.
"Melodrama is no use, is it?" she said. "You are not impressed by it; I can't act it. Life is less serious than the stage. Shall we come back together along the road to yesterday, and find our old, safe footing? ... And—shall I forgive you what you've done this summer day?"
"I want you to marry me," he said between compressed lips. "I'll make good, yet."
"What!" she exclaimed in apparent amazement. "You!"
"Will you marry me?"