As she said this she swept toward him. She sank down beside him and kissed him, and looked up into his face. Again the thought came to him. Here were riches. Here was a woman whose beauty was talked about in every city in Canada, who could be his pride, who cared for him despairingly. If he wished, this mansion and wealth could be his. The delicate perfumes about her seemed to steal into his brain and affect his thought.
An hour ago his resolves for himself had appeared so unchangeable that they seemed of themselves to prop him up. And now he found himself trying, with a brain that refused to assist him, to prop up his resolutions, trying to remember what their best merits had been. One glimmer of an idea was left in him—a purpose to preserve his fealty to Margaret, and he thought that, if he could only get away for a moment to think quietly, he might remember what the best points of his resolutions had been. The perfumes, the beauty, the wealth, the liking he felt for her, the duty he owed to her, and perhaps her concentration upon what she desired—all conspired against him. But, with this part of an idea left to him, he succeeded in being able slightly to turn his head away.
When she asked him again what was to be done there was an unreal decisiveness in his voice as he said:
"Of course, the only thing to be done is for you to immediately marry Jack."
She sprang from him as if he had stabbed her. She was furious with disappointment.
"I will never marry Jack! What a dishonorable thing to propose!"
The idea of dishonor to Jack seemed, for the first time, quite an argument. When the ethics of a matter can be utilized they suddenly seem cogent.
"Very well," said Geoffrey, shrugging his shoulders and rising as if to go away. "My idea was 'any port in a storm'—a poor idea, perhaps, and certainly, as you say, entirely dishonorable, but still feasible. Of course, if you have made up your mind not to marry him, we may as well consider the interview as ended. I'm afraid I have nothing more to suggest."
He did not intend to go away, but he held out his hand as if about to say good-by. She stood half turned away trying to think. The idea of his leaving her to her trouble dazed her. She was terrified to realize that she would be without help.
"Oh, how cruel you are!"