“Oh, you’re very much mistaken. He’d be altogether unworldly in a matter of that kind. He would be true to himself at any cost. That was what always charmed me so in Gilbert. He had the air and talk of a light man, but he was as true as steel under it all. Every day a man has a hundred occasions to prove himself mean or great, and Gilbert, without any show of being principled this way or that, always did the manly and generous and loyal thing.”
“Shall we go back, now?” asked Mrs. Farrell. “I am rather tired, after all.”
“Will you take my arm?” asked Easton. “It isn’t of much use yet, I’m ashamed to think, but it will be. Did you despise me when I was lying there sick?”
“Despise you?”
“Why, I think a sick man is a contemptible kind of creature. You women seem to be able to make anything gracious and appropriate, even suffering; but a sick man can only be an odious burden. We ought to be allowed to crawl away like hurt animals into holes and clefts of rocks, and take the chances, unseen, of dying or living. Were you able to pity me very much?”
“I don’t see why you ask such things,” she faltered. “Don’t you think I did?”
“Oh yes, too much. Sometimes I’m afraid that, without your knowing it, it’s been all pity from the beginning. I dare say every decently modest man wonders what a woman finds to love in him. I wanted you to love me from the first instant I saw you, but I never concealed from myself that I wasn’t worth a thought of yours. What a curious thing it is that makes one willing to receive everything for nothing.” He laid his left hand upon her fingers where they passively clung to his right arm. “Why, how cold your hand is!” he said. “It seems incredible that it’s going to be my hand some day! Everything else under the sun has its price; you slave for it, you risk your life for it, you buy it somehow. But the divinest thing in the world is given, it has no price, it’s invaluable; we can’t merit a woman’s love any more than we can merit God’s mercy. Come, take yourself from me again! I’ve never given you a fair chance to say me nay. You must acknowledge that you never had time to answer that question of mine. Before you could decide whether you could endure me or not you had to pity me so much that you were biased in my favor. I ought to set you free, and let you judge again whether you would have me!”
Her breath went and came quickly, as he spoke in this mixed jest and earnest. He tried to make her meet his eye, peering round into her face, but she would not look at him. If this was the release, the opportunity, so long and wildly desired, it found her helpless to seize it. She moved her head from side to side like one stifling. “Oh, don’t! How can you?” she gasped. “Don’t talk so any more,” she entreated. “I can’t bear it!”
She turned her face away; he tenderly pressed her arm against his side. They were near the house again, and she slipped her hand from his arm and fled indoors. He blushed with joy, and walked on down the birch avenue, where she saw him sitting, after a while, on a stone by the wayside. She went to join him, holding forward, as she drew near him, a handful of letters. “We both forgot these,” she said, with a dim smile.
“Oh yes,” he laughed. She glanced down at the stone where he sat, and up at that clump of birches through whose thin foliage the sun fell upon him, and shivered with the recognition of the spot where she had parted from Gilbert. “Sit down, Rosabel,” he said, making a place for her at his side. “This stone is large enough for both of us. I want you to help me read my letters.”