feeling better?"
"Stronger, I think."
"Is there anything more – ?"
"If you wouldn't mind sitting down – "
She had twisted her arm-chair away from the table. Whitaker took a seat a little distance from her, with a keen glance appraising the change in her condition and finding it not so marked as he had hoped. Still, she seemed measurably more composed and mistress of her emotions, though he had to judge mostly by her voice and manner, so dark was the room. Through the shadows he could see little more than masses of light and shade blocking in the slender figure huddled in a big, dilapidated chair – the pallid oval of her face, and the darkness of her wide, intent, young eyes.
"Don't!" she cried sharply. "Please don't look at me so – "
"I beg your pardon. I didn't mean to – "
"It's only – only that you make me think of what you must be thinking about me – "
"I think you're rather fortunate," he said slowly.
"Fortunate!"
He shivered a little with the chill bitterness of that cry.
"You've had a narrow but a wonderfully lucky escape."
"Oh! … But I'm not glad … I was desperate – "
"I mean," he interrupted coolly, "from Mr. Morton. The silver lining is, you're not married to a blackguard."
"Oh, yes, yes!" she agreed passionately.
"And you have youth, health, years of life before you!"
He sighed inaudibly…
"You wouldn't say that, if you understood."
"There are worse things to put up with than youth and health and the right to live."
"But – how can I live? What am I to do?"
"Have you thought of going home?"
"It isn't possible."
"Have you made sure of that? Have you written to your father – explained?"
"I sent him a special delivery three days ago, and – and yesterday a telegram. I knew it wouldn't do any good, but I … I told him everything. He didn't answer. He won't, ever."
From what Whitaker knew of Thurlow Ladislas, he felt this to be too cruelly true to admit of further argument. At a loss, he fell silent, knitting his hands together as he strove to find other words wherewith to comfort and reassure the girl.
She bent forward, elbows on knees, head and shoulders cringing.
"It hurts so!" she wailed … "what people will think … the shame, the bitter, bitter shame of this! And yet I haven't any right to complain. I deserve it all; I've earned my punishment."
"Oh, I say – !"
"But I have, because – because I didn't love him. I didn't love him at all, and I knew it, even though I meant to marry him…"
"But, why – in Heaven's name?"
"Because I was so lonely and … misunderstood and unhappy at home. You don't know how desperately unhappy… No mother, never daring to see my sister (she ran away, too) … my friendships at school discouraged … nothing in life but a great, empty, lonesome house and my father to bully me and make cruel fun of me because I'm not pretty… That's why I ran away with a man I didn't love – because I wanted freedom and a little happiness."
"Good Lord!" he murmured beneath his breath, awed by the pitiful, childish simplicity of her confession and the deep damnation that had waited upon her.
"So it's over!" she cried – "over, and I've learned my lesson, and I'm disgraced forever, and friendless and – "
"Stop right there!" he checked her roughly. "You're not friendless yet, and that nullifies all the rest. Be glad you've had your romance and learned your lesson – "
"Please don't think I'm not grateful for your kindness," she interrupted. "But the disgrace – that can't be blotted out!"
"Oh, yes, it can," he insisted bluntly. "There's a way I know – "
A glimmering of that way had only that instant let a little light in upon the darkness of his solicitous distress for her. He rose and began to walk and think, hands clasped behind him, trying to make what he had in mind seem right and reasonable.
"You mean beg my father to take me back. I'll die first!"
"There mustn't be any more talk, or even any thought, of anything like that. I understand too well to ask the impossible of you. But there is one way out – a perfectly right way – if you're willing and brave enough to take a chance – a long chance."
Somehow she seemed to gain hope of his tone. She sat up, following him with eyes that sought incredulously to believe.
"Have I any choice?" she asked. "I'm desperate enough…"
"God knows," he said, "you'll have to be!"
"Try me."
He paused, standing over her.
"Desperate enough to marry a man who's bound to die within six months and leave you free? I'm that man: the doctors give me six months more of life. I'm alone in the world, with no one dependent upon me, nothing to look forward to but a death that will benefit nobody – a useless end to a useless life… Will you take my name to free yourself? Heaven my witness, you're welcome to it."
"Oh," she breathed, aghast, "what are you saying?"
"I'm proposing marriage," he said, with his quaint, one-sided smile. "Please listen: I came to this place to make a quick end to my troubles – but I've changed my mind about that, now. What's happened in this room has made me see that nobody has any right to – hasten things. But I mean to leave the country – immediately – and let death find me where it will. I shall leave behind me a name and a little money, neither of any conceivable use to me. Will you take them, employ them to make your life what it was meant to be? It's a little thing, but it will make me feel a lot more fit to go out of this world – to know I've left at least one decent act to mark my memory. There's only this far-fetched chance – I may live. It's a million-to-one shot, but you've got to bear it in mind. But really you can't lose – "
"Oh, stop, stop!" she implored him, half hysterical. "To think of marrying to benefit by the death of a man like you – !"
"You've no right to look at it that way." He had a wry, secret smile for his specious sophistry. "You're being asked to confer, not to accept, a favour. It's just an act of kindness to a hopeless man. I'd go mad if I didn't know you were safe from a recurrence of the folly of this afternoon."
"Don't!" she cried – "don't tempt me. You've no right… You don't know how frantic I am…"
"I do," he countered frankly. "I'm depending on just that to swing you to my point of view. You've got to come to it. I mean you shall marry me."
She stared up at him, spell-bound, insensibly yielding to the domination of his will. It was inevitable.
