"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--"
"I have shaken off the impression. It must have been that I had too much at once--and the purely frivolous, which offended my puritanical streak--"
"You don"t like the Bohemian crowd any better."
"There are plenty of others. When I am ready I shall make the plunge and forbid myself to shrink from realities--"
"And the only people that will interest you will be those deep in public affairs. A woman to be a political power must be married. Otherwise she becomes the worst sort of feminine intriguer."
"I am interested in the women that are interested in the improvement of all things."
"And what is their ultimate aim, for heaven"s sake? The franchise. Do you mean to tell me that you intend to become a Club woman? I had sooner you wrote a book."
"I have no intention of doing either--"
"In other words you are a plain dreamer, and a selfish one at that--"
"I try not to be selfish. I visit no ill-humor on any one--but you!--and I do good where I can. I should be more selfish if I ran the risk of making--some man unhappy in matrimony."
"Well, I"m sick of the subject. I came to say good-bye for a time. I"m off to the south to-morrow, and then east on business. I don"t know when I shall be back--Oh, you can turn white--I can make you turn white!"
"What do you expect when you fire such a piece of news at me? What is behind this?"
"I have told you enough."
"Don"t you trust me?"
"Oh, you can keep a secret. I don"t know that I want to tell you."
"Very well."
"Oh, well, it would be beastly ungrateful in me not to. I have had a hint that, not having de-Americanized myself formally when I came of age, I may still be an American citizen. Judge Leslie has advised me to go to Washington and find out, and I am going. Are you really so interested?"
"Oh yes," said Isabel, softly. "I am interested! I have been afraid you might become discouraged and disgusted. Four more years would be a long time. Are you glad?"
"I don"t know whether I am or not. When it comes to taking the oath of allegiance to the United States--if that is sprung on me in Washington--I shall feel more like taking the next steamer for England and making my oaths there. It is a little too sudden."
"All this hesitation and doubt are natural enough until you are settled down, and become too accustomed to the country to think of anything else--"
"I accept the balm. But I have less hesitation than you imagine--whatever the doubt and disgust. And I really believe the secret of my unrest is you! Good heavens! _Do_ I love you--_already_--that would be the last straw!"
He was staring at her, and something in his face blinded her. She turned cold from head to foot; but she moved her glance to the baskets on the mantel-shelf, and replied, quietly:
"It will take some time for you to know whether you are in love again or not. You have seen me too constantly--barring the last month. I have become in many ways necessary to you. When you move to San Francisco, as I am convinced you will, and have many other resources----propinquity is all there is to ninth-tenths of what we call love----and then a little more kills it! Even if I were under the same delusion as you are I should not yield to it."
"I do love you," he said, as slowly and clearly as he was capable of enunciating. But his voice was hoa.r.s.e, and she was sensible, without turning her head, that he was rigid. "It is different--quite different.
I am willing to wait, however. I understand your hesitation. When I return--"
"Doubt of the reality of your--well--"