Part 62 (1/2)

”That you marry me,” said Percival Field with his steady eyes upon her face.

She was trembling from head to foot.

”You--you--have never seen me before to-day,” she said.

”Yes, I have seen you,” he said, ”several times. I have known your face and figure by heart for a very long while. I haven't had the time to seek you out. It seems to have been decreed that you should do that part.”

Was there cynicism in his voice? It seemed so. Yet his eyes never left her. They held her by some electric attraction which she was powerless to break.

She looked at him, white to the lips.

”Are you--in--earnest?” she asked at last.

Again for an instant she saw his faint smile.

”Don't you know the signs yet?” he said. ”Surely you have had ample opportunity to learn them!”

A tinge of colour crept beneath her pallor.

”No one ever proposed to me--like this before,” she said.

His hand was still upon her arm. It closed with a slow, remorseless pressure as he made quiet reply to her previous question.

”Yes. I am in earnest.”

She flinched at last from the gaze of those merciless eyes.

”You ask the impossible,” she said.

”Then it is all the simpler for you to refuse,” he rejoined.

Her eyes were upon the hand that held her. Did he know that its grasp had almost become a grip? It was by that, and that alone, that she was made aware of something human--or was it something b.e.s.t.i.a.l--behind that legal mask?

Suddenly she straightened herself and faced him. It cost her all the strength she had.

”Mr. Field,” she said, and though her voice shook she spoke with resolution, ”if I were to consent to this--extraordinary suggestion; if I married you--you would not ask--or expect--more than that?”

”If you consent to marry me,” he said, ”it will be without conditions.”

”Then I cannot consent,” she said. ”Please let me go!”

He released her instantly, and, turning, picked up her cloak.

But she moved away to the window and stood there with her back to him, gazing down upon the quiet river. Its pearly stillness was like a dream.

The rush and roar of London's many wheels had died to a monotone.

The man waited behind her in silence. She had released the blind-cord, and was plucking at it mechanically, with fingers that trembled.

Suddenly the blast of a siren from a vessel in mid-stream shattered the stillness. The girl at the window quivered from head to foot as if it had pierced her. And then with a sharp movement she turned.