"Because you don't love him," was the reply which further fed her curiosity as to his trend of thought. "You couldn't love such a man. He is incapable of appreciating you. For two such persons to marry would be a crime against the holiest laws of the universe."
"I can't quite agree with you," she replied, as she slowly shook her proud head. "You see, Mr. Brown, there are things more important than even marriage. It is important that I save my brothers, for their own sakes. I don't count. If I should have to accept this money, it may save Tobe Keith and my dear boys." She laughed half-bitterly. "What would I care after that? Do you think I would begrudge the price? Never, and I'd be as true a wife as ever was bought in a slave-mart in the Orient. Always—always after that I'd know positively that I'd accomplished some actual good in life."
"Never! never!" he cried. "It would be wrong unpardonably wrong!"
"How can you say that—you, of all men?" she suddenly demanded. "Didn't you intimate last night that by giving up your home and becoming a wanderer you had helped make others happy?"
"That was different," he flashed out. "I was a worthless drunkard, a disgrace to my home, relatives, and friends. I was compelled to leave, anyway. I could not have held my head up another day. But it is different with you. You have been nothing but a help and a blessing to your family and friends. You deserve all that life can possibly give to any one, and you must get your just dues."
She smiled and slowly shook her head. "You are a poor witness for your argument," she said. "When the time came you forgot yourself, and that really is the ideal course. You have intimated that the decision, whatever it was, has not made you unhappy, and I think it will be the same with me. Thousands of women have been contented after marriage with men they did not love very deeply. Women have even married for sordid reasons alone, and led normal lives afterward. Why should I not take the risk with such a motive as mine would be? No, if Albert Frazier is the means of saving Tobe Keith's life and restoring my brothers to me, I shall withhold nothing from him that I can give. Already he is working night and day to prevent their arrest. I couldn't bear to see them behind the bars of a jail. Kensy could stand it, but not my poor, sensitive, fanciful Martin. Let's not talk about it any more."
Tears were in her eyes, and her lips were twitching under a flood of emotion about to burst from its confines. Here the bell was rung for luncheon.
"You go on in," Mary said, huskily. "I am not a bit hungry. You will excuse me, won't you?" She turned toward the stairs to go up to her room, and, like a man walking in a dream, he went to his place at the table. What a mockery the act of eating seemed when his soul was in such turmoil! On his walk home he had felt very hungry, but his appetite had left him. He ate perfunctorily, so much so that Aunt Zilla showed concern.
"What ails yer, sir?" she asked. "Yer ain't gwine ter mek yo'se'f sick, is yer? Dat strain, two trips in one, thoo all dat mud en' slush, was onreasonable, 'long wid no sleep."
He smiled up at her. His contact on a level with the lowest of mankind had broadened his sympathies for humble people, and he felt drawn to her, for her tone was unmistakably kind.