"I have nothing to give," she murmured. "I haven't anything of my own but my mother's watch, and that won't go, so it wouldn't be of any use to anybody."
"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?"
What For?
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?"
Alden Confesses
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!"