Then Alan began again and talked all he knew. He urged, he prayed,
he bent forward, he spoke soft and low, he played on her tenderest
chords as a loving woman. Herminia was moved, for her heart went
forth to him, and she knew why he tried so hard to save her from
her own higher and truer nature. But she never yielded an inch.
She stood firm to her colors. She shook her head to the last, and
murmured over and over again, "There is only one right way, and no
persuasion on earth will ever avail to turn me aside from it."
The Truth had made her Free, and she was very confident of it.
At last, all other means failing, Alan fell back on the final
resort of delay. He saw much merit in procrastination. There was
no hurry, he said. They needn't make up their minds, one way or
the other, immediately. They could take their time to think.
Perhaps, with a week or two to decide in, Herminia might persuade
him; or he might persuade her. Why rush on fate so suddenly?
But at that, to his immense surprise, Herminia demurred. "No, no,"
she said, shaking her head, "that's not at all what I want. We
must decide to-day one way or the other. Now is the accepted time;
now is the day of salvation. I couldn't let you wait, and slip by
degrees into some vague arrangement we hardly contemplated
definitely. To do that would be to sin against my ideas of
decorum. Whatever we do we must do, as the apostle says, decently
and in order, with a full sense of the obligations it imposes upon
us. We must say to one another in so many words, 'I am yours; you
are mine;' or we must part forever. I have told you my whole soul;
I have bared my heart before you. You may take it or leave it; but
for my dignity's sake, I put it to you now, choose one way or the
other."
Alan looked at her hard. Her face was crimson by this with
maidenly shame; but she made no effort to hide or avert it. For
the good of humanity, this question must be settled once for all;
and no womanish reserve should make her shrink from settling it.
Happier maidens in ages to come, when society had reconstructed
itself on the broad basis of freedom, would never have to go
through what she was going through that moment. They would be
spared the quivering shame, the tingling regret, the struggle with
which she braced up her maiden modesty to that supreme effort. But
she would go through with it all the same. For eternal woman's
sake she had long contemplated that day; now it had come at last,
she would not weakly draw back from it.