Regina stopped in her walk, and looked up at him.
What loveliness in those blue eyes, full of the sky and heaven's own light.
"No, Everest, I am not going to marry you."
The man could never recall exactly what his feelings were as he heard her. Amaze was certainly the first, then a sort of relief, then disappointment, and then, so strange is humanity, a nascent desire that they should marry after all.
"But, my darling, why not?"
"Because you don't really wish it; you ask me because you think it is your duty, after what has happened. But I have given you my love and myself as free gifts, not at a price that you must pay. I have no price. No one can buy me, either by marriage or anything else. Most women have; the women of the town bargain for so many shillings before they give themselves; the women of our class bargain for marriage and settlements, for a home, for fixed income, for the chained servitude to them, for all his life, of the man they say they love; but I feel differently, Everest." And she turned to him suddenly, stopping under the branch of the swaying palm; her eyes were alight, her form seemed to expand and heighten, red shafts of the sunlight sought out her hair and rested there, crowning her with light. "I have given you what I have given. There is nothing I want from you. I have given you myself, and you have given me passion and intense, overwhelming happiness. I do not want, and I will not accept, anything more."
Everest looked back at her and could not take his eyes away. As in the first hour of their passion, she seemed less to him like a woman than a goddess, an immortal. To talk of worldly things to her, to think of them in her presence, seemed suddenly absurd. In his own room, while thinking of her, she had seemed a helpless girl, whom he had injured, and was bound in honour to protect. Face to face with her now, in the garden, she seemed an all-powerful divinity, who had bestowed upon him gifts that had no earthly price. The vivid sky above them enveloped her with light, turning her white clothing into gold, and her fair hair into flame, the red glow of it fell across the smooth pallor of her face and shone in the wide-open eyes, regarding him with proud, fearless confidence.
He felt silenced, abashed, confused, with a still more violent passion waking within him for her, now that she seemed to hold herself aloof from him full of conscious power, self-reliant, seeking and asking nothing from him. Like most men, Everest felt a sort of instinctive intolerance of women who clung to him, pursued him. He was kind to them, for that was his nature, but his own passion and desire began to wane the moment its object seemed to be clinging dependently to him. The wild spring towards liberty, the elastic rebound of the captive in his arms, were what stirred the fiercest fires within him, nerved him to the greatest efforts to hold her to him. Now, looking at the passionate, beautiful form of the woman before him, and understanding that she neither wished to curtail his freedom nor give up her own, he really felt he would like to lead her to church, and there bind her to him fast, by all the laws that man and God could devise. He advanced towards her with one of those quick, easy movements that always wrapped her in delight when she saw them, and brought the red deer of Exmoor to her mind.
He took her arms above the elbows; through the muslin she was wearing he could feel their soft firmness, their satin surface. How the touch thrilled him, and her also! The electric shock of joy in the contact was so great to them both that neither could speak or move for the moment, but each stood motionless, gazing into the other's transfigured face.