It was not easy to return to the topic of her child's health. She had revived my curiosity on the subject of her association with Greenwater Broad. The child was still quietly at play in the bedchamber. My second opportunity was before me. I took it.
"I won't distress you," I began. "I will only ask leave, before we change the subject, to put one question to you about the cottage and the lake."
As the fatality that pursued us willed it, it was her turn now to be innocently an obstacle in the way of our discovering each other.
"I can tell you nothing more to-night," she interposed, rising impatiently. "It is time I put the child to bed--and, besides, I can't talk of things that distress me. You must wait for the time--if it ever comes!--when I am calmer and happier than I am now."
She turned to enter the bed-chamber. Acting headlong on the impulse of the moment, I took her by the hand and stopped her.
"You have only to choose," I said, "and the calmer and happier time is yours from this moment."
"Mine?" she repeated. "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!"