"A woman's reason all right enough," muttered her father. "Talk United States, girlie. What's the trouble?"
Once more she clung to him, and said very tenderly, now:
"Father, won't you rest content, won't you let me stay with you always, always taking care of you, doing for you—there's no one else...." She caught his big hand in hers. "I want to go down the years with you, hand in hand, never leaving you, father—never...." She choked suddenly.
"You can do that as Beekman's wife," he persisted.
"I shall not be Beekman's wife," she insisted, strangling a sigh.
"I want to know the reason," he demanded, with that veiled threat in his tone which never failed of its results.
"Will you forgive if I tell you?"
"I won't forgive you if you don't!"
Leslie drew herself away and leaned against the door as though for support, for strength.
"Father, Eliot Beekman wouldn't ask me to marry him until he had made a position? for himself, had something to offer me. He has said it a thousand times. He's got pride—too much pride, it seems to me. But I've got pride, too. Months ago I would have married Eliot—he didn't know that—any time he asked me. It's got beyond me now. He's got everything to offer me, I've got nothing in return to offer him."