"What do you mean?"
"Say the word," I replied, "and you and your child have a home and a future before you."
She looked at me half bewildered, half angry.
"Do you offer me your protection?" she asked.
"I offer you a husband's protection," I answered.
"I ask you to be my wife."
She advanced a step nearer to me, with her eyes riveted on my face.
"You are evidently ignorant of what has really happened," she said.
"And yet, God knows, the child spoke plainly enough!"
"The child only told me," I rejoined, "what I had heard already, on my way here."
"All of it?"
"All of it."
"And you still ask me to be your wife?"
"I can imagine no greater happiness than to make you my wife."
"Knowing what you know now?"
"Knowing what I know now, I ask you confidently to give me your hand.
Whatever claim that man may once have had, as the father of your child, he has now forfeited it by his infamous desertion of you.
In every sense of the word, my darling, you are a free woman.
We have had sorrow enough in our lives.
Happiness is at last within our reach.
Come to me, and say Yes."
I tried to take her in my arms. She drew back as if I had frightened her.
"Never!" she said, firmly.
I whispered my next words, so that the child in the inner room might not hear us.
"You once said you loved me!"
"I do love you!"
"As dearly as ever?"
"More dearly than ever!"
"Kiss me!"
She yielded mechanically; she kissed me—with cold lips, with big tears in her eyes.
"You don't love me!" I burst out, angrily.
"You kiss me as if it were a duty.
Your lips are cold—your heart is cold.
You don't love me!"
She looked at me sadly, with a patient smile.
"One of us must remember the difference between your position and mine," she said.
"You are a man of stainless honor, who holds an undisputed rank in the world.
And what am I?
I am the deserted mistress of a thief.
One of us must remember that.
You have generously forgotten it.
I must bear it in mind.
I dare say I am cold.
Suffering has that effect on me; and, I own it, I am suffering now."
I was too passionately in love with her to feel the sympathy on which she evidently counted in saying those words.
A man can respect a woman's scruples when they appeal to him mutely in her looks or in her tears; but the formal expression of them in words only irritates or annoys him.
"Whose fault is it that you suffer?" I retorted, coldly.
"I ask you to make my life a happy one, and your life a happy one.
You are a cruelly wronged woman, but you are not a degraded woman.
You are worthy to be my wife, and I am ready to declare it publicly.