“That I will not accept your kind offer to—pay your court to me?” she answered, with derision. “Certainly. I have no mind to be wooed by you!” Again she held out her wrist. “You know the stale proverb: ‘He that will not when he may, when he will he shall have nay!’” And she made him a little bow, her eyes sparkling, her cheeks bright.
He turned his back on her, and stood for a moment looking from the window which was the nearer to the fire—the one looking over the lake. The words of her proverb—stale enough in truth—ran very sorrowfully in his ears. “He that will not when he may! He that will not when he may!” No, he might have known that she was not one to forget. He might have known that the words he had said, and the things that he had done, would rankle. And that she who had not hesitated to elope—to punish him for his neglect of her—would not hesitate to punish him for worse than neglect. He stood a long minute watching the tiny waves burst into white lines at the foot of Hayes Woods. No, she could not forget—nor forgive. But she could act, she had acted, as if she had done both. She had saved his child. She had risked her life for it. And if she had done that with this resentment, this feeling in her heart, if she had done it, moved only by the desire to show him that he had misjudged her—in a sense it was the nobler act, and one like—ay, he owned it sorrowfully—like herself! At any rate, it did not become him to cast a word of reproach at her. She had saved his child.
He turned at length, and looked at her. He saw that her figure had lost its elation, and her cheeks their colour. She was leaning against the side of the window, and looked tired and ill, and almost as she had looked when she came into the room. His heart melted.
“I would like you to know one thing,” he said, “before I go. Your triumph is greater, Henrietta, than you think, and your revenge more complete. It is no question of pity with me, but of love.” He paused, and laughed awry. “The worse for me, you will say, and the better for you. Vae victis! Still, even if you hate me——”
“I did not say that I hated you!”
“You said——”
“I did not! I did not!” she repeated, with a queer little laugh. And she sat down on the window seat, and turned quickly with a pettish movement, so that he could only see the side of her face. “I said nothing of the kind.”
“But——”
“I said something very different!”
“You said——”