"But—you don't want money?" he protested. "You're too much the right sort of an American girl for that."
"No, not exactly money; but the man who appeals to me is one who can surmount all obstacles," she answered with grave tenderness; "who has success running in his veins." Not a shade of her former gravity now showed on the speaker's face; it lighted as if a flame of enthusiasm had escaped from the temple of her soul. She paused for a moment and lifted her head, and in the transporting gaze that seemed to pass beyond him and was lost into space, for the first time the man read and understood the girl's nature.
"Have you ever lain awake at night, Billy, ever curled up on a window-seat in the daytime and planned your future?" She did not wait for an answer, but kept on: "I have; and in these dreams of mine I would always take my place by the side of my great knight errant, helping him to become greater—the damsel riding on the pillion of my lord's war-horse as he goes to war. At times he has been a diplomatist, a jurist, a law-maker; and I have always lent him strength. When I marry, Billy, my husband's work will be my work; his struggles, my struggles; but the man must have greatness running through his veins."
Murgatroyd smiled sheepishly. He had his full proportion of conceit, and he did not quite relish this.
"Then I haven't figured often in the limelight of your dreams?"
"If only you had, Billy, but you haven't, much as I have tried my best to fit my knight's armour on you and place you on his war-horse. Now can't you see what it would mean if we tried the experiment of marriage? Marriage would not make me happy; it would be misery——"
"Misery?" he snatched the word from her lips.
"Yes, misery for you," she finished. "Can the girl who must have money make a poor man happy, much as she may love him? Can the butterfly make a bookworm happy, much as she may love him? A woman with social ambitions loves a man with none; can she make him happy? No! And while I am none of these, yet, somehow, I've got to fulfil my destiny; and I'm not going to chafe, anger and everlastingly offend the man who doesn't belong—doesn't fit in with my ideas!"
"But I do fit in, as you phrase it," Murgatroyd maintained. "Haven't I ambition? And am I not a fighter?—You'd think so if you knew the devil of a fight I am having right now with my own organisation—with Cradlebaugh's; and I'm going to win!"
Shirley smiled faintly at his almost boyish earnestness, but she shook her head.