"But are you sure you don't like America best now? You can't have lived here all these years without letting the place have its effect on you, however little you may have thought about it. Why, your very speech shows it! And what about your friends—haven't you got as many on this side as the other? You've practically admitted it.... And do you realize what construction is sure to be put on your leaving just now...?"
"What are you driving at?" She looked quickly up at him, curious in spite of herself to discover the trend of his arguments, in themselves scarcely worth answering. He did not reply for a moment, but stared gravely back at her, and when he spoke again it was from a different angle.
"Beatrice, why have you been telling me all these things...?"
He knew what he was going to do now, what he was striving toward with the whole strength of his newly-forged determination. And if at the back of his brain there struggled a crowd of lost images—ghosts of ideals which at this time yesterday had been the unquestioned rulers of his life—stretching out their tenuous arms to him, giving their last faint calls for help before taking their last backward plunge into oblivion, he only went on the faster so as to drown their voices in his own.
"Beatrice, why did you think of confiding in me? Why did you pick out this particular time? You never have before; you're not the sort of person that makes confidences. It wasn't because you were going away; that was no real reason at all.... Beatrice, don't you see? Don't you see the bond that lies between us two? Don't you see what's going to happen to us both?"
"No—I don't know what you're talking about. James, don't be absurd!" She rose to her feet as if to break away, but she stood looking at his face, fascinated and possibly a little frightened by the onward rush of his words. James rose too and stood over her.
"Beatrice, we've both had a damned dirty trick played on us, the same trick at the same time. Are you going to take it lying down—spread yourself out to receive another blow, or are you going to stand up and make a fight—assert your independence—prove the existence of your own soul? I'm not, whatever happens! I'm going to make a fight, and I want you to make it with me. Beatrice, marry me! Now—to-day—this instant! Don't you see that's the only thing to do?..."
"No! James, stop! You don't know what you're saying!" She broke away from him, asserting her strength for the moment against even his impetuous onrush. "James, you're mad, stark mad! Haven't you lived long enough to know that you always regret words spoken like that? Try to act like a sensible human being, if you can't be one!"
That was all very well, but why did she weaken it by adding "I won't listen to any more such talk," which admitted the possibility that there might be more such talk very soon? And if she was determined not to listen, why did she not simply walk away and into the house? James did not put these questions to himself in this form, but the substance of their meaning worked its way through his excitement and lent him courage for an attack from a new quarter. He dropped his impetuosity and became very quiet and keen.
"You ask me to act like a sensible person; very well, I will. Let's look at things from a practical point of view. There's no love's young dream stuff about this thing, at all. We've lost that; it's been cut out of both our lives, forever. All there is left for us to do is to pick up the pieces and try to make something of ourselves, as we are. How can we possibly do that better than by marrying? Don't you see the value of a comradeship founded on the sympathy there must be between us?"