Part 75

"Someone said once," he continued, "that 'the gift without the giver is bare.' That means that what you give doesn't count unless you also give yourself."

"To give yourself,'" she repeated; then, all at once, her face illumined. "I see now!" she cried. "I can give myself! They'll need someone to take care of them, and I can do that. I can cook and scrub floors and keep everything clean, and--but Grandmother won't let me," she concluded, sadly.

A paragraph from Edith's letter flashed vividly into his memory: "The door of the House of Life is open for you and for me, but it is closed against her. It is in your power at least to set it ajar for her; to admit her, too, into full fellowship, through striving and through love."

His heart yearned toward her unspeakably. They belonged to one another in ways that Edith had no part in and never could have. Suddenly, without looking at her, he said: "Rosemary, will you marry me?"

She turned to him, startled, then averted her face. Every vestige of colour was gone, even from her lips. "Don't!" she said, brokenly. "Don't make fun of me. I must go."

She rose to her feet, trembling, but he caught her hand and held her back. "Look at me, dear. I'm not making fun of you. I mean it--every word."

She sat down beside him, then, well out of reach of his outstretched hand. "What for?" she asked, curiously.

"Because I want you."

"I--I don't understand."

"Don't you love me?"

"You have no right to ask me that." Her tone was harsh and tremulous with suppressed emotion.

"No," he agreed, after a pause, "I suppose I haven't." She did not answer, so, after a little, he rose and stood before her, forcing her eyes to meet his.

"Do you--know?" he asked.

Rosemary hesitated for a moment. "Yes, I--know," she said, in a different tone.

"And that was why you----"

"Yes." Her voice was scarcely audible now.

"It wasn't true, then, that you didn't love me?"

She turned upon him fiercely. "What right have you to ask me all these questions?" she cried, passionately. "What have you to offer me? How can you take all I have to give and give me nothing in return? What is your love worth? What do you think I am? The plaything of an idle hour, something to be taken up or cast aside whenever you may choose, to be treated kindly or brutally as your fancy may dictate, to be insulted by your pity--by what you call your love? No, a thousand times no!"

His face was very white and his mouth twitched, but in a moment he had gained, in a measure, his self-control. "I don't blame you in the least, Rosemary. I deserve it all, I know. But, before you condemn me utterly, will you listen to me for a few moments?"

She assented, by the merest inclination of her head.

"I want to be honest with you," he went on, clearing his throat, "and I want to be honest with myself. No doubt you think I'm all kinds of a cad, and rightly so, but, at least, I've been honest--that is, I've tried to be.

"When I asked you to marry me, early in the Spring, I meant it, just as I mean it now, and I was glad when you said you would. Then--she came.

"I had nothing whatever to do with her coming, in fact, I protested against it, as mother will tell you if you ask her. I didn't know her, and I didn't want her, but after I knew her----"

"You did want her," said Rosemary, coldly.

"Yes, I wanted her, and she was married to another man. She had sufficient grounds for a divorce, though she never told me what they were, and I pleaded with her to take advantage of the opportunity. I tried by every means in my power to persuade her, and when you--released me----"

"You were glad," she said, finishing the sentence for him.

"Yes," he replied, in a low tone, "I was glad. She decided, finally, to leave it to him. If he wanted her back, she would go; if he preferred his freedom, she would give it to him. And, of course, he wanted her, and he had the right."

"So she went."