“Oh, don’t, don’t!” she wailed, at last. “What must you think of me? I did believe that I loved you once—that day when you asked me; and then when you were taken sick, and I thought you might die, how could I help caring for you? And afterward, when you were better, and you never showed any misgiving, I couldn’t undeceive you; it had to go on. I always respected you more than anyone in the world; you’re the best man I ever saw; better than I ever dreamed of; it frightened me to think how far too good for me you were. And why do you blame me so much, now?” she piteously implored. “You said, once, that you didn’t ask me to love you; that all you wanted was to love me.”
Easton rubbed his hand wearily over his forehead, and drew a long breath. “If I blamed you I was wrong,” he answered, gravely. “It was my fault.”
His hand began to tremble on the birch, and he sank down on the rock where he had been sitting. She saw his faltering, and dropped on her knees before him, and instinctively cast one arm about him to support him. He put it away. “I’m perfectly well,” he said, with his deathly face. “But I shall sit here awhile before I go back to the house. Don’t—don’t let me keep you.”
The dismissal seemed to strike her back from him, but she did not rise. She only dropped her face in the hollow of her rejected arm, and moaned, “Oh, how you must despise me! But don’t drive me from you!”
“I didn’t mean that,” he said; “I thought of sparing you.”
“But don’t spare me! It’s that that drives me wild. I want you to tell me what it is I’ve done. I want you to judge me.”
“Judge yourself, Rosabel. I will not.”
“But I can’t have any mercy on myself! Oh, keep me from myself! Don’t cast me off! I know I’m not worthy of you, but if you love me, take me! I will be a good wife to you, indeed I will.”
“Oh no,” said Easton, in the tone of a man hurt beyond all solace, who faintly refuses some compassionately proffered, impossible kindness. “I have loved you, Heaven knows how dearly, and I could have waited patiently any length of time in the hope of your love; that was what I meant when I said I didn’t ask you to love me then. But now—”
She must have felt the exquisite manliness of his intention toward her. Perhaps she contrasted the grandeur which would not reproach her by a word or look, with the relentless bitterness in which Gilbert had retaliated all upon her. She had always admired Easton; it may be that in this moment she felt a thrill of the supreme tenderness. She suddenly clung to his arm. “But I want you to take me!” she cried. “Don’t you trust me? Don’t you think I know my own heart, even now? Oh, if you will only believe in me again, I know I shall love you!”