I might have half of you, at any rate.
But this business would claim, not half of you, but nine-tenths of you, or ninety-nine hundredths.
"Remember, the meaning of marriage to me is not to get a man's money to spend.
I want the man.
You say you want ME.
And suppose I consented, but gave you only one-hundredth part of me.
Suppose there was something else in my life that took the other ninety-nine parts, and, furthermore, that ruined my figure, that put pouches under my eyes and crows-feet in the corners, that made me unbeautiful to look upon and that made my spirit unbeautiful.
Would you be satisfied with that one-hundredth part of me?
Yet that is all you are offering me of yourself.
Do you wonder that I won't marry you?—that I can't?"
Daylight waited to see if she were quite done, and she went on again.
"It isn't that I am selfish.
After all, love is giving, not receiving.
But I see so clearly that all my giving could not do you any good.
You are like a sick man.
You don't play business like other men.
You play it heart and and all of you.
No matter what you believed and intended a wife would be only a brief diversion.
There is that magnificent Bob, eating his head off in the stable.
You would buy me a beautiful mansion and leave me in it to yawn my head off, or cry my eyes out because of my helplessness and inability to save you.
This disease of business would be corroding you and marring you all the time.
You play it as you have played everything else, as in Alaska you played the life of the trail.
Nobody could be permitted to travel as fast and as far as you, to work as hard or endure as much.
You hold back nothing; you put all you've got into whatever you are doing."
"Limit is the sky," he grunted grim affirmation.
"But if you would only play the lover-husband that way—"
Her voice faltered and stopped, and a blush showed in her wet cheeks as her eyes fell before his.
"And now I won't say another word," she added.
"I've delivered a whole sermon."
She rested now, frankly and fairly, in the shelter of his arms, and both were oblivious to the gale that rushed past them in quicker and stronger blasts.
The big downpour of rain had not yet come, but the mist-like squalls were more frequent.
Daylight was openly perplexed, and he was still perplexed when he began to speak.
"I'm stumped.
I'm up a tree.
I'm clean flabbergasted, Miss Mason—or Dede, because I love to call you that name. I'm free to confess there's a mighty big heap in what you say.
As I understand it, your conclusion is that you'd marry me if I hadn't a cent and if I wasn't getting fat.
No, no; I'm not joking.
I acknowledge the corn, and that's just my way of boiling the matter down and summing it up.
If I hadn't a cent, and if I was living a healthy life with all the time in the world to love you and be your husband instead of being awash to my back teeth in business and all the rest—why, you'd marry me.
"That's all as clear as print, and you're correcter than I ever guessed before.
You've sure opened my eyes a few.
But I'm stuck.
What can I do?
My business has sure roped, thrown, and branded me. I'm tied hand and foot, and I can't get up and meander over green pastures.
I'm like the man that got the bear by the tail.
I can't let go; and I want you, and I've got to let go to get you.
"I don't know what to do, but something's sure got to happen—I can't lose you.
I just can't.
And I'm not going to.
Why, you're running business a close second right now.