The Inner Shrine Part 41

"I don't put you in any position whatever. The circ.u.mstances are not of my making. They are as much beyond my control as they are beyond yours."

"They're not wholly beyond mine. If there are some things I can't do, there are some I can prevent."

"What things?"

His tone alarmed her, and she struggled to her feet.

"You're willing to make me a great sacrifice; but at least I can refuse to accept it."

"What do you mean?" She moved slightly back from him, behind the protection of one of the tables piled breast-high with its white load.

"You're willing to lose for me the last vestige of your good name--"

"I don't care anything about that," she said, hurriedly.

"But I do. I won't let you."

"How can you stop me?" she asked, staring at him with large, frightened eyes.

"I shall tell Dorothea's part in the story."

"You'd--?" she began, with a questioning cry.

"All who care to hear it, shall. They shall know it from its beginning to its end. They shall lose no detail of her folly or of your wisdom."

"You would sacrifice your child like that?"

"Yes, like that. Neither she nor I can remain so indebted to any one, as you would have us be to you."

"You--wouldn't--be--indebted--to--me?"

"Not to so terrible an extent. If it's a choice between your good name and hers--hers must go. She'd agree with me herself. She wouldn't hesitate for one single fraction of an instant--if she knew. She'd be grateful to you, as I am; but she couldn't profit by your magnanimity."

"So that the alternative you offer me is this: I can protect myself by sacrificing Dorothea, or I can marry you, and Dorothea will be saved."

"I shouldn't express it in just those words, but it's something like it."

"Then I'll marry you. You give me a choice of evils, and I take the least."

"Oh! Then to marry me would be--an evil?"

"What else do you make it? You'll admit that it's a little difficult to keep pace with you. You come to me one day accusing me of sin, and on another announcing my contrition, while on the third you may be in some entirely different mood about me."

"You can easily render me ridiculous. That's due to my awkwardness of expression and not to anything wrong in the way I feel."

"Oh, but isn't it out of the heart that the mouth speaketh? I think so.

You've advanced some excellent reasons why I should become your wife, and I can see that you're quite capable of believing them. At one time it was because I needed a home, at another because I needed protection, while to-day, I understand, it is because I love you."

"Is this fair?"

"I dare say you think it isn't; but then you haven't been tried and judged half a dozen times, unheard, as I've been. I'll confess that you've shown the most wonderful ingenuity in trying to get me into a position where I should be obliged to marry you, whether I would or not; and now you've succeeded. Whether the game is worth the candle or not is for you to judge; my part is limited to saying that you've won. I'm ready to marry you as soon as you tell me when."

"To save Dorothea?"

"To save Dorothea."

"And for no other reason?"

"For no other reason."

"Then, of course, I can't keep you to your word."

"You can't release me from it except on one condition."

"Which is--?"

"That Dorothea's secret shall be kept."

"I must use my own judgment about that."

"On the contrary, you must use mine. You've made me a proposal which I'm ready to accept. As a man of honor you must hold to it--or be silent."

"Possibly," he admitted, on reflection. "I shall have to think it over.

But in that case we'd be just where we were--"

"Yes; just where we were."

"And you'd be without help or protection. That's the thought I can't endure, Diane. Try to be just to me. If I make mistakes, if I flounder about, if I say things that offend you, it's because I can't rest while you're exposed to danger. Alone, as you are, in this great city, surrounded by people who are not your friends, a prey to criticism and misapprehension, when it is no worse, it's as if I saw you flung into the arena among the beasts. Can you wonder that I want to stand by you?

Can you be surprised if I demand the privilege of clasping you in my arms and saying to the world, This is my wife? When Christian women were thrown to the lions there was once a heathen husband who leaped into the ring, to die at his wife's side, because he could do no more. That's my impulse--only I could save you from the lions. I couldn't protect you against everything, perhaps, but I could against the worst. I know I'm stupid; I know I'm dull. When I come near you, I'm like the clown who touches some exquisite tissue, spun of azure; but I'm like the clown who would fight for his treasure, and defend it from sacrilegious hands, and spend his last drop of blood to keep it pure. It's to be put in a position where I can't do that that I find hard. It's to see you so defenceless--"

"But I'm not defenceless."

"Why not? Whom have you? n.o.body--n.o.body in this world but me."

"Oh yes, I have."

"Who?"

She smiled faintly at the fierceness of his brief question.

"It's no one to whom you need feel any opposition, even though it's some one who can do for me what you cannot."

"What I cannot?"

"What you cannot; what no man can. _Asperges me hyssopo, et mundabor_.

Thou shalt purge me with hyssop, and I shall be clean. Derek, He has purged me with hyssop, even though it has not been in the way you think.

With the hyssop of what I've had to suffer He has purged me from so many things that now I see I can safely commit my cause to Him."

"So that you don't need me?"