第88章

"If you don't want to marry me," Ralph now began again, without abruptness, with diffidence rather, "there is no need why we should cease to see each other, is there? Or would you rather that we should keep apart for the present?""Keep apart? I don't know--I must think about it.""Tell me one thing, Mary," he resumed; "have I done anything to make you change your mind about me?"She was immensely tempted to give way to her natural trust in him, revived by the deep and now melancholy tones of his voice, and to tell him of her love, and of what had changed it. But although it seemed likely that she would soon control her anger with him, the certainty that he did not love her, confirmed by every word of his proposal, forbade any freedom of speech. To hear him speak and to feel herself unable to reply, or constrained in her replies, was so painful that she longed for the time when she should be alone. A more pliant woman would have taken this chance of an explanation, whatever risks attached to it; but to one of Mary's firm and resolute temperament there was degradation in the idea of self-abandonment; let the waves of emotion rise ever so high, she could not shut her eyes to what she conceived to be the truth. Her silence puzzled Ralph. He searched his memory for words or deeds that might have made her think badly of him.

In his present mood instances came but too quickly, and on top of them this culminating proof of his baseness--that he had asked her to marry him when his reasons for such a proposal were selfish and half-hearted.

"You needn't answer," he said grimly. "There are reasons enough, Iknow. But must they kill our friendship, Mary? Let me keep that, at least.""Oh," she thought to herself, with a sudden rush of anguish which threatened disaster to her self-respect, "it has come to this--to this--when I could have given him everything!""Yes, we can still be friends," she said, with what firmness she could muster.

"I shall want your friendship," he said. He added, "If you find it possible, let me see you as often as you can. The oftener the better.

I shall want your help."

She promised this, and they went on to talk calmly of things that had no reference to their feelings--a talk which, in its constraint, was infinitely sad to both of them.

One more reference was made to the state of things between them late that night, when Elizabeth had gone to her room, and the two young men had stumbled off to bed in such a state of sleep that they hardly felt the floor beneath their feet after a day's shooting.

Mary drew her chair a little nearer to the fire, for the logs were burning low, and at this time of night it was hardly worth while to replenish them. Ralph was reading, but she had noticed for some time that his eyes instead of following the print were fixed rather above the page with an intensity of gloom that came to weigh upon her mind.

She had not weakened in her resolve not to give way, for reflection had only made her more bitterly certain that, if she gave way, it would be to her own wish and not to his. But she had determined that there was no reason why he should suffer if her reticence were the cause of his suffering. Therefore, although she found it painful, she spoke: