"What made you think that?"
"Oh, I don"t know. Didn"t you want to?"
He knew that the fact which their words veiled was now the first thing in their mutual consciousness. He spoke the truth in saying, "No, I never wanted to," but this was only a mechanical truth, and he knew it.
He had an impulse to put the burden of the situation on her, and press her to say why she thought he wished to do so; but his next emotion was shame for this impulse. A thousand times, in these reveries in which he had imagined meeting her, he had told her first of all how he had overheard her talking in the room next his own in the hotel, and of the power her voice had instantly and lastingly had upon him. But now, with a sense spiritualized by her presence, he perceived that this, if it was not unworthy, was secondary, and that the right to say it was not yet established. There was something that must come before this,--something that could alone justify him in any further step. If she could answer him first as he wished, then he might open his whole heart to her, at whatever cost; he was not greatly to blame, if he did not realize that the cost could not be wholly his, as he asked, remotely enough from her question, "After I wrote that I was coming up here, and you did not answer me, did you think I was coming?"
She did not answer, and he felt that he had been seeking a mean advantage. He went on: "If you didn"t expect it, if you never thought that I was coming, there"s no need for me to tell you anything else."
Her face turned towards him a very little, but not so much as even to get a sidelong glimpse of him; it was as if it were drawn by a magnetic attraction; and she said, "I didn"t know but you would come."
"Then I will tell you why I came--the only thing that gave me the right to come against your will, if it _was_ against it. I came to ask you to marry me. Will you?"
She now turned and looked fully at him, though he was aware of being a mere blur in her near-sighted vision.
"Do you mean to ask it now?"
"Yes."
"And have you wished to ask it ever since you first saw me?"
He tried to say that he had, but he could not; he could only say, "I wish to ask it now more than ever."
She shook her head slowly. "I"m not sure how you want me to answer you."
"Not sure?"
"No. I"m afraid I might disappoint you again."
He could not make out whether she was laughing at him. He sat, not knowing what to say, and he blurted out, "Do you mean that you won"t?"
"I shouldn"t want you to make another mistake."
"I don"t know what you"--he was going to say "mean," but he subst.i.tuted--"wish. If you wish for more time, I can wait as long as you choose."
"No, I might wish for time, if there was anything more. But if there"s nothing else you have to tell me--then, no, I cannot marry you."
Langbourne rose, feeling justly punished, somehow, but bewildered as much as humbled, and stood stupidly unable to go. "I don"t know what you could expect me to say after you"ve refused me--"
"Oh, I don"t expect anything."
"But there _is_ something I should like to tell you. I know that I behaved that night as if--as if I hadn"t come to ask you--what I have; I don"t blame you for not trusting me now. But it is no use to tell you what I intended if it is all over."
He looked down into his hat, and she said in a low voice, "I think I ought to know. Won"t you--sit down?"
He sat down again. "Then I will tell you at the risk of--But there"s nothing left to lose! You know how it is, when we think about a person or a place before we"ve seen them: we make some sort of picture of them, and expect them to be like it. I don"t know how to say it; you do look more like what I thought than you did at first. I suppose I must seem a fool to say it; but I thought you were tall, and that you were--well!--rather masterful--"
"Like Juliet Bingham?" she suggested, with a gleam in the eye next him.
"Yes, like Juliet Bingham. It was your voice made me think--it was your voice that first made me want to see you, that made me write to you, in the beginning. I heard you talking that night in the hotel, where you left that circular; you were in the room next to mine; and I wanted to come right up here then; but I had to go back to New York, and so I wrote to you. When your letters came, I always seemed to hear you speaking in them."
"And when you saw me you were disappointed. I knew it."
"No; not disappointed--"
"Why not? My voice didn"t go with my looks; it belonged to a tall, strong-willed girl."
"No," he protested. "As soon as I got away it was just as it always had been. I mean that your voice and your looks went together again."
"As soon as you got away?" the girl questioned.
"I mean--What do you care for it, anyway!" he cried, in self-scornful exasperation.
"I know," she said thoughtfully, "that my voice isn"t like me; I"m not good enough for it. It ought to be Juliet Bingham"s--"
"No, no!" he interrupted, with a sort of disgust that seemed not to displease her, "I can"t imagine it!"
"But we can"t any of us have everything, and she"s got enough as it is.
She"s a head higher than I am, and she wants to have her way ten times as bad."
"I didn"t mean that," Langbourne began. "I--but you must think me enough of a simpleton already."
"Oh, no, not near," she declared. "I"m a good deal of a simpleton myself at times."
"It doesn"t matter," he said desperately; "I love you."
"Ah, that belongs to the time when you thought I looked differently."
"I don"t want you to look differently. I--"
"You can"t expect me to believe that now. It will take time for me to do that."
"I will give you time," he said, so simply that she smiled.
"If it was my voice you cared for I should have to live up to it, somehow, before you cared for me. I"m not certain that I ever could. And if I couldn"t? You see, don"t you?"
"I see that I was a fool to tell you what I have," he so far a.s.serted himself. "But I thought I ought to be honest."
"Oh, you"ve been _honest_!" she said.
"You have a right to think that I am a flighty, romantic person," he resumed, "and I don"t blame you. But if I could explain, it has been a very real experience to me. It was your nature that I cared for in your voice. I can"t tell you just how it was; it seemed to me that unless I could hear it again, and always, my life would not be worth much. This was something deeper and better than I could make you understand. It wasn"t merely a fancy; I do not want you to believe that."
"I don"t know whether fancies are such very bad things. I"ve had some of my own," Barbara suggested.
He sat still with his hat between his hands, as if he could not find a chance of dismissing himself, and she remained looking down at her skirt where it tented itself over the toe of her shoe. The tall clock in the hall ticked second after second. It counted thirty of them at least before he spoke, after a preliminary noise in his throat.
"There is one thing I should like to ask: If you had cared for me, would you have been offended at my having thought you looked differently?"
She took time to consider this. "I might have been vexed, or hurt, I suppose, but I don"t see how I could really have been offended."