“I love you. It's been hidden in my heart more than eight years, but I find I must tell you. All the arguments against it I've rehearsed a thousand times. The world is at your feet. You could never love a man like me. To your friends I'm a bad lot. They never would consider me a moment.”
Gently she interrupted. “Is it my friends you want to marry?”
The surprise of it took him by the throat. His astonished eyes questioned for a denial. In that moment a wonderful secret was born into the world. She held out both hands with a divine frankness, a sweetness of surrender beyond words.
“But your father—your people!”
“'Where thou lodgest, I will lodge: thy people shall be my people.”' She murmured it with a broken little laugh that was a sob.
Even then he did not take her in his arms. The habit of reverence for her was of many years' growth and not to be broken in an instant.
“You are sure, dear—quite sure?”
“I've been sure ever since the day of our first talk on the Bellingham.”
Still he fought the joy that flooded him. “I must tell you the truth so that you won't idealize me... and the situation. I am enlisted in this fight for life. Where it will lead me I don't know. But I must follow the road I see. You will lose your friends. They will think me a crank, an enemy to society; and they will think you demented. But even for you I can't turn back.”
A tender glow was in her deep eyes. “If I did not know that do you think I would marry you?”