“I am sure you can’t possibly know,” he said, “what a revelation it is to a man who has become accustomed to look at things in an ordinary everyday way, to be brought into close contact with a woman whose sole idea is to do right. One’s courage fails sometimes, when one is alone against the world, and I want you to help me to do what ought to be done for the kingdom.”
“I can’t marry you,” gasped Nadia, looking up at him with anguished eyes; “it would not be right.”
“Not right! Why not?” he asked in astonishment.
“On account of so many things. My parents—Louis——”
“I am sure you need not trouble yourself about them,” said Caerleon, with an involuntary smile at the thought of the ease with which the O’Malachy family would almost certainly be managed. “Louis is provided for in the army, and your father and mother will give up their wandering life, and settle down quietly here.”
“But it is myself!” cried Nadia, desperately. “I am not what you want in a wife, not good enough, not—not important enough. I should do nothing but bring trouble upon you. I am afraid to marry you. I dare not do it. I will not.”
“I think you will, when you understand how much I want you,” said Caerleon, with all the spirit of his fighting forefathers roused by her opposition. “Why, I am offering you work, and you know you have often told me that it is wrong to refuse work when it comes in one’s way. You cannot tell me that you mean to cast me off because you are afraid of the silly remarks people will make?”
“Oh, why will you make me say it?” she cried, driven to bay by his tone. “I will not marry you, then, because you ought to marry a princess—some one who has been brought up to be a queen, and whose family will be a support to you in Europe. That is what you must do.”
“Nadia!” he said in astonishment, “you tell me to marry a stranger, when I love you? You can’t think that right?”
“I know,” she said, despairingly. “It all seems to me horribly, fearfully wrong, but it must be right, because it is so hard to do.”