"You said this afternoon you would do anything I asked you. Do you remember?"
"Yes, I said so--and I meant it."
"You said it in reply to my question whether you would accept me if I asked you to marry me."
Dick started from the sullen stupor into which he had fallen and listened with perplexed interest.
"You are not quite right in your tenses, Austin," she remarked. "You said: Would I have accepted you if you had asked me?"
"I want to change the tense into the present," he replied.
She met his glance calmly. "You ask me to marry you in spite of what you told me this afternoon?"
"In spite of it and because of it," he said, drawing up a chair near to her. "A great crisis has arisen in our lives that must make you forget other words I spoke this afternoon. Those other words and everything connected with them I blot out of my memory forever. I want you to do me an infinite service. If there had been no deep affection between us I should not dare to ask you. I want you to be my wife, to take me into your keeping, to trust me as an upright man to devote my life to your happiness. I swear I'll never give you a moment's cause for regret."
She plucked for a while at her gown. It was a strange wooing. But in her sweet way she had given him her woman's aftermath of love. It was a gentle, mellow gift, far removed from the summer blaze of passion, and it had suffered little harm from the sadness of the day. She saw that he was in great stress. She knew him to be a loyal gentleman.
"Is this the result of that scene in the armoury?" she asked quietly.