Part 45 (1/2)
”I have changed my mind,” he said, abruptly. ”I had intended to marry you on any terms, merely because you suited my critical taste. But I believe that if I married you in that way I should beat you or kill you--or you would kill me. You are capable of anything. Love would square matters with us--nothing else.”
”Then is the engagement broken?” asked Isabel, placidly. She did not sit down, but stood with a foot on the fender.
He relieved his feelings by kicking a stool across the room, then came and stood in front of her.
”Could you love me?” he demanded.
”I am not the village prophet.”
”Have you made up your mind you will not marry me?”
”Oh yes--that.”
”Because you couldn't love me, or because you are determined not to marry?”
”I won't feel and suffer and have my life torn to tatters when I can keep it whole! I had rather marry you without love, if I believed myself indispensable to your success in life.”
”Much you know about it. I won't have you on any such terms.”
”You are in no imminent danger. Heavens, what a wind! You must stay here to-night. If the spare room is too cold you can sleep on this divan.”
”If that is a polite hint, I am ready to take it. I have been here long enough.”
”Oh, but I mean it. I will not hear of you riding back in this pitch darkness. You would be more likely to go into the marsh than not. You can return to Rosewater so late to-morrow that Sister Ann will infer you have made a morning call.”
”I shall return to-night. It was as dark when I came, and I am not altogether a fool. Neither is my horse.”
”But you are not so familiar with the road,” murmured Isabel, irrepressibly.
”That is the one decent thing you have said to me to-night. It is these sudden lapses into the wholly feminine that save me from despair. What a night for romance, and you and I sparring like two prize-fighters! That is as far as we have ever got. If you would ever let me know you--sometimes I have an odd fancy that I can see a lamp burning in your breast, and that if ever I got at it, and searched all the nooks and crannies of your strange nature by its light, I should love you as profoundly as it is possible for a man to love a woman.”
”I am afraid it is only a taper in a cup of oil. At all events it is not a search-light, even to myself. I fancy people only seem complicated to others when they do not wholly understand themselves.”
”Do you understand yourself?”
She shrugged her shoulders.
”Are you perfectly satisfied that you never could love me?”
She reddened and her sensitive mouth moved, but she brought her teeth together. ”That has nothing to do with it.”
”Everything!”
”Nothing!”
”Do you mean to tell me that you are literally contented with your life as it is?--living out here alone with nothing to do but read and look after those confounded chickens? You have the most romantic temperament I have ever met, and the way you gratify it would make an elephant laugh.”
”I dream and think of the future.”
”Future? You saw what that amounted to when you were in town--”