The Inner Shrine Part 19

"I can almost explain them myself. What I require is rather in the way of corroboration. Wasn't it much as the knight of old threw the mantle of his protection over the shoulders of a distressed damsel?"

"I know what you mean; but I don't admit the justice of the simile."

"But if you did admit it, wouldn't it be something like what actually occurred?"

"You're putting questions to me," he said, smiling down at her; "but you haven't answered mine."

"I must beg leave to point out," she smiled, in return, "that you haven't asked me one. You've only stated a fact--or what I presume to be a fact. But before we can discuss it I ought to be possessed of certain information; and you've put me in a position where I have a right to demand it."

After brief reflection Derek admitted that. As nearly as he could recall the incident at Mrs. Bayford's dinner-party, he recounted it.

"You see," he explained, in summing up, "that, as a sn.o.bbish person, she could hardly be expected to forgive you for forgetting her, when she had been introduced to you four times in a season. She not unnaturally fancied you forgot her on purpose, so to speak--"

"I suppose I did," she murmured, penitently.

"What?" he asked, with sudden curiosity. "Would you--"

"I wouldn't now. I used to then. Everybody did it, when people were introduced to us whom we didn't want to know. I've done it when it wasn't necessary even from that point of view--out of a kind of sport, a kind of wantonness. I've really forgotten about Mrs. Bayford now-- everything except her face--but I dare say I remembered perfectly well, at the time. It would have been nothing unusual if I had."

"In that case," he said, slowly, "you can't be surprised--"

"I'm not," she hastened to say. "If Mrs. Bayford retaliates, now that she has the power, she's within her right--a right which scarcely any woman would forego. It was perfectly natural for Mrs. Bayford to speak ill of me; and it was equally natural for you to spring to my defence.

You'd have sprung to the defence of any one--"

"No, no," he interjected, hurriedly.

"Of any one whom you--respected, as I hope you respect me. You've offered me," she went on, her eyes filling with sudden tears--"you've offered me the utmost protection a man can give a woman. To tell you how deeply I'm touched, how sincerely I'm grateful, is beyond my power; but you must see that I can't avail myself of your kindness. Your very willingness to repeat at leisure what you said in haste makes it the more necessary that I shouldn't take advantage of your chivalry."

"Would that be your only reason for hesitating to become my wife?"

The deep, vibrant note that came into his voice sent a tremor through her frame, and she looked about her for support. He himself offered it by taking both her hands in his. She allowed him to hold them for a second before withdrawing behind the intrenched position afforded by the huge chair from which she had risen, and on the back of which she now leaned.

"It's the reason that looms largest," she replied--"so large as to put all other reasons out of consideration."

"Then you're entirely mistaken," he declared, coming forward in such a way that only the chair stood between them. "It's true that at Mrs.

Bayford's provocation I spoke in haste, but it was only to utter the resolution I had taken plenty of time to form. If I were to tell you how much time, you'd be inclined to scorn me for my delay. But the truth is I'm no longer a very young man; in comparison with you I'm not young at all. You yourself, as a woman of the world, must readily understand that at my age, and in my position, prudence is as honorable an element in the offer I am making you as romance would be in a boy's. I make no apology for being prudent. I state the fact that I've been so only that you may know that I've tried to look at this question from every point of view--Dorothea's as well as yours and mine. I took my time about it, and long before I warned Mrs. Bayford that she was speaking of one who was dear to me, my mind was made up. With such hopes as I had at heart it would have been wrong to have allowed her to go on without a word of warning."

"I can see that it would have that aspect."

"Then, if you can see that, you must see that I speak to you now in all sincerity. My desire isn't new. I can truthfully say that, since the first day I saw you, your eyes and voice have haunted me, and the longing to be near you has never been absent from my heart. I'll be quite frank with you and say that, before you came here, it was my avowed intention not to marry again. Now I have no desire on earth--my child apart--so strong as to win you for my wife. The year we've spent under the same roof must have given you some idea of the man whom you'd be marrying; and I think I can promise you that with your help he would be a better man than in the past. Won't you say that I may hope for it?"

With arms supported by the high back of the chair and cheek on her clasped hands, she gazed away into the dimness of the room, as if waiting for him to continue; but during the silence that ensued it seemed to Derek as if a shadow crossed her features, while her bright look died out in a kind of wistfulness. She had, perhaps, been hoping for a word he had not spoken--a word whose absence he had only covered up by phrases.

"Well? Have you nothing to say to me?" he asked, when some minutes had gone by.

"I'm thinking."

"Of what?"

"Of what you say about prudence. I like it. It seems to me I ought to be prudent, too."

"Undoubtedly," he agreed, in the dry tone of one who a.s.sents to what he finds slightly disagreeable.

"I mean," she said, quickly, "that I ought to be prudent for you--for us all. There are a great many things to be thought of, things which people of our age ought not to let pa.s.s unconsidered. Men _think_ the way through difficulties, while women _feel_ it. I'm afraid I must ask for time to get my instincts into play."

"Do you mean that you can't give me an answer to-night--before I go on this long journey?"

"I couldn't give you an affirmative one."

"But you could say, No?"

"If you pressed the matter--if you insisted--that's what I should have to say."

"Why?"

"That would be--my secret."

"Is it that you think you couldn't love me?"

For the first time the color came to her cheek and surged up to her temples, not suddenly or hotly, but with the semi-diaphanous lightness of roseate vapor mounting into winter air. As he came nearer, rounding the protective barrier of the arm-chair, she retreated.

"I should have to solve some other questions before I could answer that," she said, trying to meet his eyes with the necessary steadiness.

"Couldn't I help you?"

She shook her head.

"Then couldn't you consider it first?"

"A woman generally does consider it first, but she speaks about it last."

"But you could tell me the result of what you think, as far as you've drawn conclusions?"

"No; because whatever I should say you would find misleading. If you're in earnest about what you say to-night, it would be better for us both that you should give me time."

"I'm willing to do that. But you speak as if you had a doubt of me."

"I've no doubt of you; I've only a doubt about myself. The woman you've known for the last twelve months isn't the woman other people have known in the years before that. She isn't the Diane Eveleth of Paris any more than she is the Diane de la Ferronaise of the hills of Connemara, or of the convent at Auteuil. But I don't know which is the real woman, or whether the one who now seems to me dead mightn't rise again."

"I shouldn't be afraid of her."

"But I should. You say that because you didn't know her; and I couldn't let you marry me without telling you something of what she was."

"Then tell me."

"No, not now; not to-night. Go on your long journey, and come back. When it's all over, I shall be sure--sure, that is, of myself--sure on the point about which I'm so much in doubt, as to whether or not the other woman could return."

"I should be willing to run the risk," he said, with a short laugh, "even if she did."