Very straight on his knees beside her he bent again, pressing her rigid knees with his lips.
"I need you, Geraldine—I need all that is best in you; you must love me—take me as an ally, dear, against all that is worst in you. I'll love you so confidently that we'll kill it—you and I together—my strength and yours, my bitter and deep understanding and your own sweet contempt for weakness wherever it may be, even in yourself."
He touched her; and she shuddered under the light caress, still bent almost double, and covering her face with both hands. He bent over her, one knee on the divan.
"Let's pull ourselves together and talk sense, Geraldine," he said with an effort at lightness.
"Don't you remember that bully little girl who swung her fists in single combat and uppercut her brother and me whenever her sense of fairness was outraged? The time has come when you, who were so fair to others, are going to be fair to yourself by marrying me——"
She dropped both hands and stared at him out of wide, tear-wet eyes.
"Fair to myself—at your expense, Duane?"
"What do you mean? I love you."
"Am I to let you—you marry me—knowing—what you know? Is that what you call my sense of fairness?" And, as he attempted to speak:
"Oh, I have thought about it already!—I must have been conscious that this would happen some day—that—that I was capable of caring for you—and it alarmed me——"