She looked at me half bewildered, half angry.
“Do you offer me your protection?” she asked.
“I offer you a husband’s protection,” I answered. “I ask you to be my wife.”
She advanced a step nearer to me, with her eyes riveted on my face.
“You are evidently ignorant of what has really happened,” she said. “And yet, God knows, the child spoke plainly enough!”
“The child only told me,” I rejoined, “what I had heard already, on my way here.”
“All of it?”
“All of it.”
“And you still ask me to be your wife?”
“I can imagine no greater happiness than to make you my wife.”