“You are trying to make me out perfectly horrid! I—I——” Zoe blushed and stammered—“I shouldn’t mind very much being engaged, if it was quite certain that the engagement was a long one.”
“But I should. Do you really expect me to go on working quietly, not knowing where you were, or in what wild scrapes you might be involving yourself? Suppose you were again in circumstances like this summer’s. Another man is thrown with you, as I have been, falls in love with you, as I have done; you discourage him steadily, as you have discouraged me, but he forces an explanation—also like me. You plead that you are already engaged. ‘Why, what kind of double-distilled fool can the fellow be, to let you run about by yourself like this? He can’t care for you much!’ And it would be perfectly just.”
“I have said more to you than I could ever have imagined I should say to any man on earth,” said Zoe resolutely, but with a tremor in her voice. “If you won’t wait, it is not for me to offer concessions. Why are you so impatient?”
“Because life is short and apt to end suddenly, I suppose. What’s the good of talking, Zoe? I want you, and you don’t want me, and that’s all about it.”
“Oh,” said Zoe impulsively, “when you talk like that, I have a feeling as if I saw your real self for a moment. The rest of the time you seem not to be putting forth all your strength. If you did, I—— What is it?”
“It is just that. I believe that if I looked you straight in the eyes, and said, ‘Come,’ you would come. I could make you listen to me, but I won’t. I don’t want my will merely to triumph over yours; I want your sober judgment to decide that you care for me enough to give up everything else, no matter what, for my sake, and not regret it.”
Her puzzled face was a mute request to him to go on.
“Remember what I have learnt, since I knew you first, about your brother’s future prospects. The Professor has been rubbing it in diligently. If Teffany’s claims were once recognised, or even influentially taken up, think of the gulf between you and me. Married to a poor and undistinguished soldier, you would be heavily handicapped; free, you could aspire to almost any position. Unless you really loved me, heart and soul, you must feel that I was a drag on you, and resent it, and I—I could stand anything but seeing you repent that you had married me.”
“Oh, how unkind you are!” cried Zoe. “As if anything that could possibly happen could make me change! Why, if I were a princess, and you came in as a stranger, I should step down to you and hold out my hand.”
“And I should kiss it and pass on.”